Ernst Samuel Geiger

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Ernst Samuel Geiger (born February 1, 1876 in Turgi , † December 16, 1965 in Villeneuve , resident in Brugg ) was a Swiss painter and wood cutter .

life and work

Geiger was the son of the wine merchant Ulrich and Sophie, née Schwarz. His sister Marie was the mother of Max Bill .

Geiger attended the old canton school in Aarau from 1892 to 1896 , where he was a classmate of Albert Einstein and received drawing lessons from Max Wolfinger . He then studied forestry at ETH Zurich , where he was tutored by Auguste Forel , Albert Heim and Gustav von Bunge , among others . Geiger received his doctorate in 1900 from the University of Zurich with the dissertation Das Bergell. Forest botanical monograph, in Soglio . In the following years Geiger taught at home and abroad. In 1902 he returned to Switzerland and acquired the district teaching patent. In 1904 he was a founding member of the Aarau section of the Society of Swiss Painters and Sculptors (GSMBA). Further studies took him to Munich and Paris .

In Cuno Amiet learned Geiger the woodcut technique and as soon after einstellten the first show success, he decided in 1906 for an artistic career. Geiger lived in Bern from 1908 , where he married the philologist Maria, née Bockhoff. She suffered from tuberculosis and died in 1921 giving birth to her second son. With her death, Geiger's desire to achieve international breakthroughs as a painter disappeared.

Geiger became the central secretary of the Swiss Artists' Society, which was chaired by Ferdinand Hodler at the time . As such, he was in contact with a wide variety of Swiss artists. In 1911 he received a federal art grant and moved with his family to the "Kapf" above Twann . Here he created numerous seascapes that made him known throughout Switzerland.

Thanks to a share of the inheritance, Geiger was able to acquire the "Hof" in Ligerz in 1918 . Geiger's nephew Max Bill often stayed with the family. In 1927, for example, Bill painted a room that was destroyed during a later renovation. After his early retirement in 1931, his uncle Erwin Bill moved to Ligerz, where he became community clerk and later community president.

From 1920 to 1925 Geiger lived above Locarno in Monti della Trinità and in Como . In 1926 he bought a studio house near Porto Ronco . During this time he supported Antoinette de Saint Léger financially. When Geiger's student, the hand weaver and textile designer Klara Geiger-Woerner (1902–1996), set up a hand weaving mill in the unused rooms of his property in the 1930s, Margaretha, née driver, was among her interns, who Geiger married in 1937 and with whom he was had two sons. The compulsory schooling of his sons and his age caused him to settle down. So he wrote more and more articles for newspapers and in the 1930s accepted a substitute as a drawing teacher in Biel and Twann .

Geiger created 70 ex-libris between 1905 and 1941 . Geiger chose the woodcut technique to produce them.

literature

  • WE Aeberhardt: Ernst Geiger's ex-libris. In: The Swiss Collector: Organ of the Swiss Bibliophile Society and the Association of Swiss Librarians, Vol. 15, 1941, pp. 79–84 ( digitized version ).
  • Ernst Geiger: Ticino sketches. In: Heimatschutz = Patrimoine , Vol. 24, 1929, pp. 3–13 ( digitized version ).
  • Dora Lardelli: Biography Ernst Geiger , 1999 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geiger-Woerner, Clara. In: Sikart
personal data
SURNAME Violinist, Ernst Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter and wood cutter
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Turgi
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1965
Place of death Villeneuve