28.05.1810 – 19.03.1864

Alexander Kalam is a famous Swiss landscape painter. He was born in the Swiss town of Vevey in the family of a marble Carver. The boy began to draw in his youth, he was especially attracted to landscapes of Switzerland. With 15 years Alexander worked in the Bank, and in 1829, with the financial support of his employer, banker Diodati, began to take lessons from the artist françois diday. A few months later, Kalam decided to devote his life to artistic creativity.

Exhibition activities landscape began in 1835, the painter exhibited his forest and mountain scenery in Berlin and Paris. Works of the master found a large number of admirers, especially among the inhabitants of Germany.

In 1842, the artist went to Paris to demonstrate his five paintings: “Mont Blanc”, “Jungfrau”, “Brientskoe lake”, “Monte Rosa” and “Mont servin”. In 1844, Calam traveled to Italy, where he visited Rome and Naples, made numerous sketches and painted several paintings. Despite the fact that the master was very successful in the transfer of southern nature, its main theme was the mountain landscape of Switzerland.

A distinctive feature of the artist’s work was a very frequent display in four landscapes consistently four seasons or days. The lithographs, engravings and miniatures devoted to Swiss nature made by Alexander Kalam were also very popular. Epic, mostly Alpine landscapes made by this artist is extremely popular in the nineteenth century and had a significant impact on the further development of the landscape genre.