Juerg Kreienbühl

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Jürg Kreienbühl (born August 12, 1932 in Basel ; † October 30, 2007 in Cormeilles-en-Parisis , Département Val-d'Oise ) was a painter of Swiss and French nationality who lived in Basel and Cormeilles-en-Parisis. His wife Suzanne Lopata (* 1932) and his son Stéphane Belzère (* 1963) have also emerged as artists.

Jürg Kreienbühl, La zone, 1972, dispersion on hardboard, 90 × 122 cm (private collection)

Life

Jürg Kreienbühl was born in Basel, attended high school and the preparatory course in graphics at the general trade school and completed an apprenticeship as a flat painter. With a grant from the city of Basel, he went to Paris for the first time in 1956 to become an artist. In the following years he settled in the Bidonville (barracks town) Bezons outside the French metropolis in a disused, wheelless bus and lived among clochards, gypsies and North Africans who became his friends. He reproduced their way of life in impressive paintings.

Kreienbühl later painted the remnants stored in a factory hall and the figures of saints lying on the floor in shards, which were made from baked clay in the "Sainterie" (Manufacture d'Art Chrétien) in Vendeuvre-sur-Barse until 1962 .

His first works in the Galerie de Zoologie, built by Jules André in 1889 , were created in 1974. The motifs were dusty and damaged replicas of animals and stuffed birds. Due to the dilapidated condition, the gallery had to be closed in 1965 and was no longer accessible for decades. After extensive restoration work, it was reopened in 1994 under the new name Grande Galerie de l'Evolution. Kreienbühl also worked at the Galerie d'Anatomie Comparée. Both galleries, along with others, still form the complex of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle , which before and after 1800 was the focus of European scientific life (with Buffon, Lamarck, Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire). Kreienbühl drew attention to this memorable place as an important cultural heritage with his painting, when he met it in the last state before its threatened decline and reproduced it like a reporter.

Other places of his work were the construction site of the office district La Défense outside Paris, the sculpture park of the iron sculptor Bernhard Luginbühl in Mötschwil and others.

His last large group of works was created in the Warteck brewery in Basel, where beer production was stopped in 1990. Almost everywhere Kreienbühl went, he encountered a world in a state of decline and disappearance. It was not for nothing that he was called the "chronicler of the end times".

plant

In terms of style, Kreienbühl's painting can be assigned to " realism ". French artists such as Edouard Vuillard (1868–1940) and Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) were among his models . However, there is not much to do with the term at Kreienbühl. Rather, one should speak of a “metaphysical realism”.

The young Kreienbühl had one of his most defining impressions when he observed a rotting rat on the Reinacherheide outside Basel. Perhaps this encounter determined his preference for mountains of rubbish, chaotic surroundings and interiors in the Bidonville area of ​​his early years, oil spills («Petrolnymphéas», 1978) and so on. Life among the excluded did not allow him to resort to the non-binding nature of abstract painting. Throughout his life he was looking for the greatest possible authenticity, which he found most likely in places of decay. For him, art meant bearing witness.

Understanding his concept of realism also includes his LSD experiments, which he undertook together with his friend Albert Hofmann (1906–2008). For him, the visible world was only a pretext or the image of an omnipresent, albeit invisible reality that first has to be experienced. As an artist, he was both a materialist and a mystic.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1956 First major exhibition in a demolished property in Basel
  • 1973 Jürg Kreienbühl. Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau.
  • 1985 Homage à la Galerie de Zoologie. Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle Paris.
  • 1992 Jürg Kreienbühl, pictures, drawings, prints. Art Museum Basel.
  • 1994 La Ville. Group exhibition. Center Georges Pompidou Paris.
  • 1998 Jürg Kreienbühl. L'œuvre gravé et lithographié 1952–1997. Musée du Dessin et d'Estampe Originale, Gravelines, F, and Kunsthaus Olten.
  • 2001 Jürg Kreienbühl. Peintures. Center Culturel Suisse Paris
  • 2015 Quelques êtres vivants dans leur environnement quotidien, together with Gilles Aillaud. Gabrielle Maubrie Gallery, Paris.
  • 2018 Jürg Kreienbühl, Suzanne Lopata, Stéphane Belzère. Kunsthaus Interlaken

Jürg Kreienbühl is also represented in the following public collections (selection): Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Kunstmuseum, Basel, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel; Christoph Merian Foundation, Basel; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Beauvais; Musée du Dessin et de l'Estampe Originale de Gravelines; Musée Louis Senlecq, L'Isle-Adam; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Center Pompidou, Paris; Collection de la ville de Paris; FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes; Musée de l'Isle de France, Sceaux.

literature

  • 1973 Jürg Kreienbühl. Text by Heiny Widmer. Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau. Without ISBN.
  • 1982 Jürg Kreienbühl. Text by Heiny Widmer. Gallery zem Specht Basel. ISBN 3-85696-005-8 .
  • 1985 drawings, pastels, graphics. Text Beat Wismer. Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau. ISBN 3-905004-01-1 .
  • 1988 The wonderful world of the Paris Zoological Gallery. Texts by Léonard Ginsburg, Aurel Schmidt, Jürg Kreienbühl, Carl Gans. Gallery zem Specht Basel. ISBN 3-85696-010-4 .
  • 1992 Jürg Kreienbühl, pictures, drawings, prints. Foreword by Dieter Koepplin, with the contribution “Die Vision” by Jürg Kreienbühl. Art Museum Basel. ISBN 3-7204-0077-8 .
  • 1998 Jürg Kreienbühl. Catalog raisonné de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié 1952–1997. Texts by Jürg Kreienbühl, Dominique Tonneau-Ryckelynck, Peter Killer and Roland Plumart. Gravelines n.d. (1997). ISBN 2-908566-08-7 .
  • 1998 Jürg Kreienbühl: Painting of passion. Texts by Christoph Stutz, Heiny Widmer, Georg K. Glaser, Carl Gans, Léonard Ginsburg, Rolf Hochhuth, Aurel Schmidt, Albert Hofmann. Basel 1998. ISBN 3-7245-1013-6 .
  • 2007 Chronicler of the end times: on the death of the painter Jürg Kreienbühl. Text Aurel Schmidt. Basler Stadtbuch vol. 128, 2007. ISBN 978-3-85616-368-6 .
  • Philippe Dagen: Jürg Kreienbühl. Le Monde, November 16, 2007.
  • 2008 Jürg Kreienbühl: Dessins-Pastels-Gouaches 1952–2003. Préface de Jean-Michel Leniaud. Center Culturel de l'Arsenal, Maubeuge. ISBN 978-2-912473-26-4 .

Movie

  • 1986 The sinking ark. Direction and screenplay Bernhard Lehner, Konrad Wittwer. Look Now Zurich film agency.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kreienbühl, Jürg , on www.sikart.ch, accessed on August 25, 2018
  2. ^ Aurel Schmidt: in: Basler Stadtbuch . Ed .: CMS Christoph Merian Foundation Basel. tape 128 . CMS, Basel 2007, ISBN 978-3-85616-368-6 , pp. 137 .
  3. ^ Albert Hofmann: in: Painting of Passion . Ed .: Jürg Kreienbühl. Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel 1998, ISBN 978-3-7245-1013-0 , pp. 248 .
personal data
SURNAME Kreienbühl, Juerg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss and French painter and engraver
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 2007
Place of death Cormeilles-en-Parisis