Artist Dominique Arpa-Cirpka stands as an exception in the “Parallel Lives” series of the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie JSH: in her journey, watchmaking came second, for her true calling has always been art-painting, and exhibitions around the world…
Joël Grammson, JSH & Swiss Watch Passport (by JSH)’s journalist
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She likes to quote R. Schumann: “To cast light into the depths of the human heart, such is the artist’s vocation.” She trained at the Zurich School of Fine Arts; from her earliest childhood she painted, she drew. She later joined the Germinal studio led by the Vaud painter Jacques Walther, who saw in her his most gifted student and offered her her first solo exhibition
A seasoned traveller of the world, she became a mother and, from 2009 onwards, set sail for an unexpected destination: the miniature landscapes of watch dials. There she scatters genuine butterfly wings, capturing the ephemeral essence of these escapees from the cocoon which, once their holometabolous transformation is complete, fly off to pollinate the earth.
Organic, silken, warm and utterly unique, Dominique Arpa-Cirpka’s dial compositions weave together the tenses of the authentic and the lived: regularly for the ArtyA brand, whose Geneva Left Bank boutique she is also the soul of notably through the “Son of the Earth” collection; or for Philippe Dufour’s “Simplicity” watch, to which she lends a few graceful beatings of wings…
