CollectionThe Things of Life

The painter is an eternal observer of his living environment in which he was born and lives. He takes pleasure in representing it in a personal way. Through his eyes, we find the elements of his living environment that have left the greatest impression on him. Charles Menge has done this in his own way, and it is the Valais, a Swiss canton in the Alps, that has inspired him for this section, which we have called Choses de la Vie (Things of Life). The Alps, due to their climate and geography, constitute a rather harsh living environment for its inhabitants. People lived there in simplicity. They prayed, worked, started families and found their simple happiness in the contentment of what was offered to them by their living environment and, above all, by their Superior. Drinking and eating, laughing and living, praying and celebrating religious festivals as a community punctuated the passing of the year, accompanied by the changing seasons and the things that the Earth offered them for their sustenance and nourishment. Such was life in the alpine valleys and plains for centuries.
Then came modernity, industrialization, and urbanization of the world. The inhabitants and their way of life are evolving and modernizing. Customs and traditions, values and transmission are gradually being lost, revived here and there by young people who are determined to reconnect with their roots. Charles Menge observed this evolution from his modest place where he lived, a witness to an era and a changing lifestyle to which he adapted. His paintings exude a nostalgia, even a melancholy, for a world that once existed, is disappearing and will eventually cease to be. This simplicity and nostalgia for the things of life reawaken in each of us memories of a world that we have all known at one time or another in our own existence and which is no more.