Kalam Alexander

Swiss painter, graphic artist, etcher and lithographer, one of the most popular landscape painters of the late Romanticism, famous for his majestic images of the Swiss Alps. Kalam was a knight of the Legion of Honor (1842) and an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (since 1845). In 1847, he was admitted as an associate member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, and from 1850 to 1851 he was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. He began his artistic studies in 1829 under the guidance of the landscape painter Francois Didet, who was given the opportunity to study by his patron, the banker Diodati. Since 1835, he exhibited his works, mainly alpine and forest landscapes, in galleries in Paris and Berlin, where they quickly gained recognition, especially in Germany. In 1839, he created a sensation at the Paris Salon by presenting the painting "Thunderstorm on the Hand", for which in 1841 he received the gold medal of the Exhibition of Fine Arts of the City of Paris. In 1853, his painting "Lake of the Four Cantons" won a prize at the International Exhibition in Paris and was purchased by Emperor Napoleon III for 15,000 francs. Alexander Kalam's works are kept in a number of major museums. At the Museum of Art and History in Geneva, at the Art Museum in Basel, at the Museum of History and Art in Neuchatel, at the National Museum in Warsaw. Individual sheets of his lithographs and etchings are represented in museum and private collections in France, England and Germany.