Barbara Uffer
Barbara Uffer (* 1873 in Savognin ; † 1935 ) was a nanny in the family of the painter Giovanni Segantini , his model and one of the most important people in the painter's life and work.
Life
Barbara Uffer, known as “Baba”, grew up as the daughter of a carpenter with six siblings in Savognin in the canton of Graubünden . As a thirteen year old she worked as a kitchen helper in the Hotel Pianta. Here Segantini, who lived there during the first three months of his stay in Savognin, met the girl in August 1886 and employed her as a nanny and domestic help. Segantini's daughter Bianca wrote of her: "She was clever and pious and soon learned, in addition to the household chores that were entrusted to her, to take into her heart the life that was around her."
Baba took care of the four small children Gottardo, Alberto, Mario and Bianca and took care of the 14 rooms of the “Peterelli” house on the southern edge of the village. Since the work lasted late into the evening, she stayed with the Segantinis. When the children were a little older, it was also part of their duties to read Segantini aloud while painting and to provide him with painting utensils, reading material and provisions when he was painting outdoors. Barbara Segantini soon became a model when he needed a young female figure for his pictures. This opened up new literary and artistic worlds for the young Barbara. Besides her wife Bice, she was the only one who could follow the creation of the pictures.
In August 1894, Segantini and his family moved to the Upper Engadine , where, to the astonishment of their family, Baba followed them. In Maloja and Soglio , where the Segantinis spent the winter months, she was integrated as a full member in the large family and their upper-class life. She earned 35 Swiss francs a month, which was sometimes paid out to her with great delay. Whenever possible, she and the children took classes with the tutor and learned Italian and French.
In September 1899, Segantini accompanied her to the Schafberg together with her 14-year-old son Mario , who was painting “ La natura ” in the center of the Alpine triptych . When he fell ill, she hurried down into the valley, took a carriage in Pontresina and drove to St. Moritz , where she informed the doctor Oskar Bernhard . The help came too late: Segantini died on September 28, 1899 on the Schafberg from an acute peritonitis . The painter Giovanni Giacometti , who had often worked with Segantini and painted him on his death bed, wrote to his colleague Cuno Amiet : “Poor Baba! Perhaps she lived the most intensely with his art. Everything that went through his head while he was working he told Baba and she kept it in her heart. ” As Baba's daughter Margaritta later said, she would have stayed with the family all her life and would never have married herself. In her necrology, Bianca Segantini adhered to Baba's funeral: After the death of my father, she stayed with us - a loyal companion of my mother and a loving mediator between the severe pain that only filled the widowed young woman's life and the joyful law of the children we were then.
After Segantini's death, Barbara stayed with the widow Bice and the children for five years. In 1905, after 19 years in the service of the Segantini family, Barbara Uffer left the family at the age of 33. In the same year she married the widower Tsasper Spinatsch in Savognin, who brought three-year-old Franz into the marriage. The couple moved to St. Gallen, where Tsasper worked as a magazine operator. Barbara gave birth to three children: Franziska (1906), Peter (1908) and Margaritta (1910). Romansh was spoken in the family .
Barbara Uffer was deeply religious and hardly ever missed an early mass. She was always tolerant of Giovanni Segantini's free worldview; she recognized lived religiosity in his pictures and in the exemplary marriage that the Segantinis led. For these reasons, rumors of a love triangle that have been whispered about from time to time are completely unfounded.
Barbara Uffer remained connected with the Segantini family throughout her life. Every year, on the anniversary of Segantini's death, she placed a bouquet of flowers on his grave in the Maloja cemetery. Barbara Uffer died two years after her husband. She was weakened by diabetes and succumbed to rapid cancer in 1935. Bice Segantini attended the funeral.
“Baba was a simple, gentle being, clean and serene, smiling at dangers, guileless in her innocence. Rosy ears peeked out from under the helmet of golden-brown hair. The greatest contrast in the white and red face were the small, black eyes that looked sharp under the blond brows. […] During the summer she wore a straw hat with a low head and a wide brim. The white puff sleeves protruded from a dark blue, red-padded vest that hugged the body. In winter she was wrapped in a wool-lined dress and a hood; But when she switched the gears in the house or sat model in the stable, she wore a white hood or a scarf that almost completely covered her hair. "
Barbara Uffer as a model
Barbara Uffer served Segantini less as a person to be portrayed; for Segantini she was rather the archetypal figure of the simple peasant woman, whom he depicted, among other things, as a drinking girl at the fountain in Bündnerin am Brunnen from 1887; as a knitting girl in a meadow in Knitting Girl from 1888; as a shepherdess under a clear blue sky in midday in the Alps from 1891 and 1892 or as a sleeper next to a fence in peace in the shade from 1892. Segantini drew the only portrait of Barbara Uffer on September 20, 1899, a few days before his death the Schafberg, a small pencil drawing. He dedicated it to his wife Bice with the words: "Alla mia cara Signora perchè non si dimentichi della sua Baba". (My dear wife, so that one does not forget her Baba.) Baba is absent from allegorical representations; this did not fit with their closeness to earth.
The best way to recognize Baba in Graubünden is at the fountain , which shows her as a drinking girl in Graubünden costume at a fountain, the only picture in which she is painted from such close quarters. But here, too, Segantini was less concerned with a portrait of Baba than with the act of drinking.
One of the most important works from the time in Savognin is the picture Knitting Girl , which shows Baba sitting in a meadow while knitting. As with most of the representations that show her as a whole figure, here too she wears the long blue work dress made of thick wool and the heavy shoes.
In the picture My Models Baba and the house servant are depicted as they look at the nascent picture Return to the Sheepfold in the light of a lantern , in which Baba is shown in turn - Baba looks at a picture of herself. In the background is the picture Plowing , which is today is exhibited in the Pinakothek in Munich.
A year later Segantini painted a second version of the painting “ Noon in the Alps” , the first version of which was created in 1891; both depict Barbara Uffer as a shepherdess. The first version hangs in the Segantini Museum, the second version belongs to the Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashiki , Japan.
"Their unaffected serenity seems to arise directly from that pure mountain world that unites humans, animals and nature in a peaceful coexistence and togetherness."
Grisons woman at the fountain, 1887
Knitting Girl, 1888
Midday in the Alps, 1891
Midday in the Alps, 1892
Rest in the shade, 1892
My models. 1888
exhibition
On the occasion of Segantini's 150th birthday and the simultaneous 100th anniversary of the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz, the museum is showing the exhibition “ Segantini's maid: muse and model ” dedicated to Barbara Uffer in summer 2008 . For this purpose, works from other museums or from private collections were made available to the museum on loan; For example, the second version of “ Noon in the Alps ” from 1892, which has not been shown in Europe for decades, or “ Ruhe im Schatten ” from Christoph Blocher's collection. The vernissage took place on May 30, 2008. Barbara Uffer's grandson, Peter Spinatsch, was among the guests.
literature
- Beat Stutzer: Segantini's maid: muse and model. Segantini Foundation, St. Moritz 2008.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bianca Segantini in the "Bündner Zeitung" of October 5, 1935.
- ^ Letter from Giacometti of October 29, 1899 to Cuno Amiet.
- ↑ Erika Lozza Pasquier: Terra Grischuna 4/1999
- ^ Website Segantini Museum St. Moritz ( Memento from December 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), special exhibition "Segantini's maid: Muse and model"
- ^ Podcast Radio DRS1 on Segantini and Barbara Uffer
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Uffer, Barbara |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss nanny and model by the painter Giovanni Segantini |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1873 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Savognin |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1935 |