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Peter Doig

Couloir 1

Couloir 2

Lost

Road to Zermatt

Alpinist Night

Holy Mountain

Based on a selection of paintings produced during his time in Zermatt, Switzerland, Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022) series triumphantly marks the artist’s return to snowscapes for the first time since the 1990s. Combining the real with the imagined, the ‘Zermatt’ works depict six filmic narratives based on Doig’s experiences within the idyllic Swiss resort time and constitute the artist’s first thematic series of works.

The ‘Zermatt’ paintings were conceived in 2018 when Doig’s friend, the architect, artist and skier Heinz Julen, offered his chalet in Zermatt for Doig to stay and paint snowscapes. The paintings that make up the six prints of this series were begun just shortly after Doig’s arrival at the chalet in 2018 and were worked on during subsequent trips to Zermatt before finally being completed in London in 2021 and 2022. 

Conceptually and compositionally, Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ series was influenced by a photograph he captured of a cat outside the chalet with the Matterhorn visible in the background. The image reminded him of ski posters designed to attract people into the mountains, characterised by a delicate balance of dynamic skier and majestic, snow-covered landscape. Simple yet enticing, these images prompted Doig to produce his own series of so-called painted posters. In doing so, ‘Zermatt’ joins a lineage of poster-making by Doig, perhaps most famously those made for his Studio Film Club in Trinidad.

Relying largely on memory to construct narratives based on his time in Zermatt, Doig’s images draw upon a range of inspirations – from the town’s strong religious tradition and the danger of its landscape to memories of skiing and commuting to the slopes. His view of the resort town was undeniably influenced by Derek Walcott’s descriptions of Zermatt in his generative series of poems, ‘The Prodigal’, from 2006.

Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ joins some of his most iconic paintings, such as ‘Ski Jacket’ (1994) and ‘Olin MK IV Part 2’ (1995-96), as his newest take on alpine landscapes populated by brightly dressed skiers. As is true of these earlier paintings, in ‘Zermatt’ Doig interrogates the impact of a snow-covered environment on one’s vision. For example, the strange nature of snow is captured in the white speckles that veil ‘Road to Zermatt’, a metaphor for the brokenness of memory, while the greenish hue of ‘Couloir 2’ recalls yellow-tinted ski goggles. 

In 2022 in collaboration with HENI Editions, the six ‘Zermatt; paintings deemed by Doig to be the most 'poster-like' in size and appearance were translated into facsimile Giclée prints on Cotton Smooth Rag and framed in oak with Optium Tru Vue Acrylic Glass. His choice to do so was in part inspired by his interest in the new printing technology and its capacity to maintain the integrity of an original painting in print form, disseminating his art to a wider audience along the way. Originally conceived as a series of painted posters on paper, in the printed format the ‘Zermatt’ paintings also take on a new dimension, bringing these images into the format that inspired them, to become so-called ‘art posters’, and making Doig’s dreamlike work more widely accessible. 

Zermatt

Based on a selection of paintings produced during his time in Zermatt, Switzerland, Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022) series triumphantly marks the artist’s return to snowscapes for the first time since the 1990s. Combining the real with the imagined, the ‘Zermatt’ works depict six filmic narratives based on Doig’s experiences within the idyllic Swiss resort time and constitute the artist’s first thematic series of works.