Hedwig Scherrer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hedwig Scherrer: self-portrait

Hedwig Scherrer (born March 11, 1878 in Sulgen TG ; † May 8, 1940 in Zurich ) was a Swiss painter and philanthropist. She was one of the first academically trained artists in Switzerland.

Life

Scherrer grew up as an only child in a middle-class family, in a climate of cosmopolitanism and cultural interest. Her father was a successful lawyer, politician and St. Gallen magistrate who campaigned for world peace. The mother encouraged the daughter's drawing and musical talent.

From an early age, she and her friend Frida Kaiser were concerned with equality for women and the improvement of social conditions. In 1894 she entered the drawing school of the St. Galler Gewerbemuseum (today Textile Museum) and enjoyed lessons in plant drawing from Johannes Stauffacher and figurative drawing from Emil Hansen (Nolde). She supplemented her general education with stays at institutes in western Switzerland and England.

In 1896, she trained as a freelance artist at the women's academy of the Münchner Künstlerinnenverein in Munich, in the subjects of nude and landscape drawing, portraying, illustrating and in various painting and printing techniques. In 1900 she completed her artistic training in Paris.

Scherrer received his first commissions for the illustration of splendid historical volumes such as The Canton of St. Gallen 1803–1903 , The History of Switzerland in the 19th Century , Swiss Own Power and The Swiss Woman . In addition, there were portraits for family and friends.

Studio house above Montlingen

The unrest at home and the noise of traffic in the city, as well as the example of other painters, led to the planning and construction of the studio house in Montlingen in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley. It is an example of a total work of art, designed, painted and decorated by Scherrer himself, upholstered in 1908. Together with the parents' holiday home on Alp Gamperdond in Vorarlberg, Montlingen was Scherrer's most important place to stay during the warmer seasons. Most of the landscapes were created in these places.

The hometown of St. Gallen, where she stayed in winter, continued to offer a wide range of activities:

  • Graphics for sports clubs (ski and alpine club, hiking bird movement ), in whose activities she participated herself
  • Equipment, scenery and figurine templates for the St. Gallen Marionette Theater (1903–1943)
  • Wall paintings for hospitals and homes in St.Gallen, Zurich and Toggenburg
  • Poetry and illustration of fairy tale books (private orders)
  • Caricatures , mostly about your own life, family and friends

In addition to the artistic activities, there was correspondence with like-minded friends. The relationship with the industrialist Fritz Iklé broke up when Scherrer realized that she could not reconcile art and marriage. In return, she gained valuable friendship with the Toggenburg pedagogue, painter, musician and folklorist Albert Edelmann (1886–1963).

Around 1918 a new art genre opened up for Hedwig Scherrer, namely miniature painting , which she developed both formally and in terms of content and which paved the way for her from Art Nouveau to Symbolism and Expressionism . After her father's death in 1924, she once again turned to a new field, traditional costume , which saw itself as a return to traditional culture and as a reaction to the whims of fashion. Scherrer studied historical costumes and created new templates and instructions for making them. She herself looked after the Rheintaler traditional costume group and presented them in 1930 with a song book she had created herself. She composed the melodies and song sets herself and provided the booklet with lithographs.

After Hitler came to power, Scherrer continued her deceased father's peace work in the sense that she created posters against the armaments industry and the war on behalf of pacifist organizations.

In the last years of her life she got more and more financial difficulties, partly because the income of the Scherrer Family Foundation decreased as a result of the economic crisis, because there were not enough artistic commissions and above all because she spent herself in favor of the needy, political refugees and border guards.

In her will she handed over her studio house to the St. Gallen artists' community (today visarte Ost ). Its subsidiary organization, the Hedwig Scherrer Foundation, now looks after the house and estate.

Works

selection

  • cyclamen

  • Churfirsten wintry

  • Puppet theater

  • miniature

  • Caricature Frida Imboden-Kaiser

  • Woman with birch

  • Old larch

  • Hood base

  • Storybook

Exhibitions

since the founding of the Hedwig Scherrer Foundation
  • 1989: Embroidery time , art and culture in St. Gallen 1870–1930, St. Gallen Art Museum
  • 1990: Hedwig Scherrer , commemorative exhibition on the 50th year of death, Katharinen, St.Gallen
  • 1994: Albert Edelmann - Hedwig Scherrer , Toggenburg-Rheintal cultural exchange, Migros Club School Lichtensteig SG and Oberriet SG community museum
  • 2002: Head and collar , with textile designs by Hedwig Scherrer, Textile Museum St. Gallen
  • 2004: Frauengestalten - Frauengestalten , with a short portrait of Hedig Scherrer, Textile Museum St.Gallen
  • 2005: Women in the service of peace , with Hedwig Scherrer, Waaghaus St.Gallen
  • 2005: Idiosyncratic - female artists at Lake Constance , Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz
  • 2006: Hedwig Scherrer - guest in Nenzinger Himmel , Wolfhaus Nenzing (Vorarlberg)
  • 2008: 100 years of the Atelierhaus in Montlingen , the Oberriet SG Community Museum and the Migros Club School St.Gallen
  • 2008: A little lifted off, visionaries, utopians, outsiders , exhibition hall of the St. Gallen government building
  • 2009: Completion of the 20-year small exhibition cycle in the Oberriet SG Community Museum
  • 2010: In memoriam - artists of the 20th century in the Rhine Valley , Frauenhof-Residenz Altstätten SG
  • 2010: Hedwig Scherrer - Striving for the Gesamtkunstwerk , Historisches Museum St. Gallen

literature

Written estate

Bookplate by Hedwig Scherrer
  • Notes from school
  • Letters to Frida (Imboden) Kaiser, St. Gallen
  • Letters to Nelly Zwicky (pseudonym Bergmann), Mollis GL
  • Diary / letters to Fritz Iklé, St.Gallen
  • Letters to Dora Schlatter, St. Gallen
  • Letters to Meta Schuster, St. Gallen
  • Letters to Elisabeth Thalmann
  • Guest books from Montlingen and Gamperdond (Nenzinger Himmel)

These sources are largely housed as a deposit in the Vadiana St. Gallen Cantonal Library .

Publications

Works
  • The fairy tale of the river. Facsimile. Hedwig Scherrer-Verlag, Oberriet 2004, ISBN 3-9522905-1-3 .
  • The fairy tale of the six brothers. Facsimile. Hedwig Scherrer-Verlag, Oberriet 2011.
  • Peter Zünd (ed.): The blue of the distance. Poems by Hermann Hesse / miniatures by Hedwig Scherrer. Hedwig Scherrer Foundation, St. Gallen / Altstätten 1997.
  • Peter Zünd. (Ed.): Hedwig Scherrer, Letters Vol. I and II. To Frida Kaiser and Nelly Zwicky. Hedwig Scherrer Foundation, Montlingen SG 2003, ISBN 3-9522905-0-5 .
  • Birthday calendar [I]. Edited picture book for the pre-reading age. Hedwig Scherrer-Verlag, Oberriet 2006.
  • Birthday calendar [II]. Hedwig Scherrer, 13 masterful plant studies (1896–1899). Compiled by Peter Zünd. Hedwig Scherrer-Verlag, Oberriet SG 2010.
  • Postage stamp Fr.1.10, Principality of Liechtenstein. Hedwig Scherrer's “Lienzerspitz”, on the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation in 1991.
Catalogs
  • Embroidery time. Catalog / accompanying document for the exhibition of the same name in the Art Museum St. Gallen. Authors' community, Verlagsgemeinschaft St. Gallen, 1989, ISBN 3-7291-1052-7 . Pp. 214-218.
  • Studio houses. Catalog of the exhibition for the 100th anniversary of the Hedwig Scherrer Atelierhaus in Montlingen 1908–2008. Hedwig Scherrer Foundation, Montlingen SG / Community Museum Oberriet SG, 2008.
  • Hedwig Scherrer (1878-1940). Catalog / accompanying document for the commemorative exhibition for the 50th year of death. Hedwig Scherrer Foundation, Katharinen St.Gallen, 1990.
  • Peter Zünd: Hedwig Scherrer - writings, sketches and miniatures. Accompanying document to the exhibition in the Historisches Museum St. Gallen: Hedwig Scherrer - Striving for the Gesamtkunstwerk Vadiana Cantonal Library, St. Gallen 2010.
Secondary literature
  • Peter Zünd: Hedwig Scherrer (1878–1940), a versatile and committed artist. in: Toggenburger Annalen 1990. Buchdruck und Verlag E. Kalberer AG, Bazenheid SG 1989. pp. 73-78.
  • Peter Zünd: artist and philanthropist Hedwig Scherrer (1878–1940). In: Unser Rheintal 1990. Rheintaler Volksfreund, Au SG 1989. pp. 231–236.
  • Peter Zünd: artist and philanthropist. In: Bodensee Hefte , No. 11, November 1990, AVD-Druck Goldach SG. Pp. 12-17.
  • Christoph Sigrist: Untold life in St. Gallen. Sermon text. Typotron AG St. Gallen, 2002, ISBN 3-908151-23-6 . Pp. 50-53.
  • Jolanda Spirig: Blossom white to raven black, St. Gallen women - 200 portraits. Limmat Verlag Zurich, 2003, ISBN 3-85791-444-0 . Pp. 337-339.
  • various authors: Sankt Galler Geschichte 2003. Office for Culture of the Canton St.Gallen, 2003, ISBN 3-908048-43-5 . Volume 6, pp. 103, 227, 229, 231; Volume 7, pp. 74, 117, 118, 153, 154, 156-158; Volume 8, p. 258.
  • Peter Zünd, in: Rheintaler Köpfe - historical-biographical portraits from five centuries. Association for the History of the Rhine Valley, Berneck SG 2004, ISBN 3-033-00265-X . Pp. 309-315.
  • Community of authors: Eigenwillig - artists on Lake Constance 1900 to 1950. Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie Konstanz, 2005, ISBN 3-929768-18-6 . P. 76/77.
  • Gerda Breuer , Julia Meer (Ed.): Women in Graphic Design. Berlin 2012, Jovis, ISBN 978-3-86859-153-8 , p. 546.
Sound carrier
  • Songs from the St.Gallen Rhine Valley. CD with a selection of 18 songs from the book of the same name by Hedwig Scherrer, interpreted by “The Original Sam Singers” under the direction of Samuel Zünd . Hedwig Scherrer-Verlag, Oberriet 2008.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Illustration and description

Web links

Commons : Hedwig Scherrer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Scherrer, Hedwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter and philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Sulgen TG
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1940
Place of death Zurich