Valais patron Léonard Gianadda passed away on Sunday
Published: Sunday, Dec 3rd 2023, 17:10
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Léonard Gianadda died on Sunday at the age of 88.
Léonard Gianadda was born in Martigny VS on August 23, 1935, the grandson of Italian immigrants. He was the son of the architect and building contractor Robert Gianadda (1906-1972) and his Valaisan wife Liliane Darbellay (1912-1973).
Léonard Gianadda entered boarding school at the Collège de Saint-Maurice VS at the age of eleven. He spent four years there, which he found painful: "I, who had barely outgrown my mother's skirts, could only go home once a quarter, I was bored and cried a lot," he told the Keystone-SDA news agency in 2021.
After graduating from high school, he went to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in 1960 and graduated as a civil engineer. In addition to his studies, Léonard Gianadda worked as a journalist and was, among other things, the first Valais correspondent for French-speaking Swiss television in the late 1950s.
Lovers of culture
Gianadda enjoyed traveling from an early age. At the age of 15, he discovered Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel, museums, churches and Naples during a stay in Italy with his mother and two brothers. "All of this had a huge impact on me," he said in the program "Les grands entretiens" on French-speaking Swiss television RTS in 2000.
In the early 1960s, he opened an engineering office with a fellow student and started building. In the same program he said: "(...) I think I lost a lot of time making money, building (...). I could have done more interesting things, reading, just that, going to shows (...)".
In 1976, he planned to build an apartment building on a plot of land he owned. But then the remains of a Gallo-Roman temple were found. At this time, his 38-year-old brother Pierre died after a plane crash.
Léonard then decided to set up a foundation in his brother's name instead of constructing the planned building. The Fondation Pierre Gianadda was inaugurated on July 19, 1978, the day Pierre would have celebrated his 40th birthday.
Since then, the museum of the same name has become nationally and internationally renowned. Art exhibitions on Klee, Picasso, Hodler, Rodin, Giacometti, Modigliani, Chagall, Gauguin, Van Gogh and other art greats are held regularly. Classical music concerts are also organized.
Social support
In 2010, Léonard Gianadda and his wife also set up the Annette and Léonard Gianadda Foundation for social causes. Among other things, he donated a building with apartments, a kindergarten and sheltered housing for the elderly to his home town of Martigny. The money generated by these rents is invested in social causes in Martigny.
In 2015, Gianadda became involved with Syrian refugees and provided five apartments for five families for five years. A natural act for the patron of the arts, whose grandfather had also been admitted to Switzerland.
Numerous awards
Léonard Gianadda has received many awards. He has been appointed Knight of the National Order of Merit of the French Republic, Knight and later Officer of the Legion of Honor, Officer of Arts and Letters, among others. In 1996 he received the Prize of the State of Valais and in 2019 the Europa Nostra Prize. In 2001, he became a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
At the beginning of November, the city of Sion organized an evening in Gianadda's honour "as a token of gratitude for his unwavering support of Sion's cultural and social institutions". The event was held in the auditorium of Sion Hospital, where the patron was cared for.
Gianadda was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Musée Rodin, the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, the Board of Trustees of the Balthus Foundation and the first Orientation Council of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. His traces can be seen everywhere in the town of Martigny, where there are no traffic lights, but there are traffic circles, which the patron repeatedly had artistically redesigned.
"It's over"
The patron did not announce a successor during his lifetime. Instead, he established the Léonard Gianadda Foundation in 2019, which manages and distributes his assets.
When the Valais native was asked about his successor in an RTS program in October 2023, he initially emphasized that the archaeological museum, the music season, the automobile museum and the sculpture park would remain.
©Keystone/SDA
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