Elsy Leuzinger

Elsy Leuzinger (born February 7, 1910 in Kilchberg, Canton of Zurich , † April 27, 2010 in Zurich ) was a Swiss art ethnologist . She made significant contributions to the scholarly examination of the art of Africa and was director of the Museum Rietberg Zurich from 1956 to 1972 . She was one of the first women in Switzerland to run a museum.

Live and act

Male ancestral figures from the island of Nias (Indonesia), gift from Elsy Leuzinger to the Museum am Rietberg Zurich

Elsy Leuzinger, born and raised in Kilchberg in the canton of Zurich, studied ethnology in Zurich. Under Hans Wehrli , she worked as a research assistant from 1930, and later until 1959 as a conservator at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich . In 1949 she received her doctorate with a thesis on the nature and shape of jewelry used by African peoples . In 1950 she co-founded the Soroptimist Zurich. She undertook important research trips to West Africa in 1951 (to the Baule , Senufo , Dogon and Bamana , together with Emil Storrer) and in 1954/55 carried out several months of field research with Jolantha Tschudi among the Afo, a then practically unknown people in Nigeria . In 1956 she was elected director of the Museum Rietberg Zurich as successor to Johannes Itten . She held this office until her retirement in 1972. In addition, she founded the subject of art from non-European peoples at the University of Zurich in 1960 as a private lecturer and from 1968 as adjunct professor , which led to the chair of the history of art in East Asia.

Originally trained as an ethnologist, she also examined works of art from non-European peoples from an art-historical perspective, which was a new approach in her time. It achieved a particularly lasting impact because some of its art-ethnological publications reached a large audience and had a lasting impact on the reception of African art, especially in the German-speaking area. These include Die Kunst der Negervölker (published from 1959 with repeated new editions and translations in the Art of the World series), the thick catalog volume Die Kunst von Schwarzafrika (published in 1970 to accompany an exhibition with over 1200 exhibits at the Kunsthaus Zürich , also with translations into several Languages) as well as the volume published by her on the art of indigenous peoples in Propylaea art history (1976).

Main publications

• Nature and form of jewelry of African peoples . Lang, Zurich 1950. (Dissertation University of Zurich)
• Africa: art of the negro peoples . Holle, Baden-Baden 1959. ( Art of the World series , with various reprints)
• The art of black Africa . Bongers, Recklinghausen 1972, ISBN 3-7647-0224-9 . (Catalog for an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich 1970/71)
• As editor: Art of the primitive peoples . With contributions by Ronald M. Berndt , Joseph Cornet, Jean Guiart and others Propylaen-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1978. ( Propylaea Art History , Supplement 3; with subsequent editions)

In addition, numerous publications in specialist journals and on the extensive collection of the Museum Rietberg Zurich.

literature

• Helmut Brinker : In memoriam: Prof. Dr. Elsy Leuzinger . In: Museum Rietberg Zurich: Annual Report 2010 . Zurich 2011, pp. 40–41.
• For the 100th birthday of Elsy Leuzinger . In: Museum Rietberg Zurich: Annual Report 2009 . Zurich 2010, pp. 34–37.
• Lorenz Homberger: A mediator of the art of foreign worlds: On the 100th birthday of Elsy Leuzinger . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 6, 2010 (No. 30), p. 25.
• The art ethnologist Prof. Dr. Elsy Leuzinger . Video recording from May 23, 1995, in conversation with Charlotte Peter . Portrait Films Association, Zurich 1995. (50 min.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heidi Tacier-Eugster: The Museum Rietberg Zurich and Elsy Leuzinger from seeing and knowing . Schwabe, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7965-3991-6 ( worldcat.org [accessed January 16, 2020]).