Karl Bickel (artist)
Karl Bickel (born February 13, 1886 in Zurich - Hirslanden ; † November 6, 1982 in Walenstadt ) was a Swiss painter, sculptor, stamp engraver and graphic artist.
Outside of his professional activity, he created the Paxmal , a monumental, temple-like peace monument above Walenstadtberg .
Life
Karl Bickel was born in Zurich in 1886. He learned lithography and cliché drawing in Paul Bleuer's renowned drawing studio in Zurich. He later worked as a technical manager in the Hüttner advertising studio and, due to his growing interest in the fine arts, attended evening courses at the arts and crafts school. In 1908, at the age of 22, he opened his own “studio for first-class advertising” in Zurich and designed graphic works of all kinds such as invitation cards, fashion catalogs, event programs, business cards and more in Art Nouveau and Art Deco style. In 1912 his artistic interest led him on an educational and study trip to Italy. From May to October he traveled to Verona, Venice, Florence and Carrara. His endeavor was to study the great masters of painting and sculpture, especially the work of Michelangelo Buonarrotis . He also wanted to gain first sculptural experience. Michelangelo's work had a lasting influence on Bickel's artistic work. After his return, however, he hardly devoted himself to sculpture.
In 1913 Bickel fell ill with tuberculosis. He had to go to the lung sanatorium Walenstadtberg for a cure for 13 months. The disease was already so advanced that there was little prospect of a cure. Bickel then vowed to make his life meaningful if he got away. During this difficult and long period of uncertainty, the basic idea of a monumental work emerged. After his recovery he returned to Zurich and became known to a wide public because of his poster work.
In 1924 he gave up his own studio in Zurich and, together with his wife, Berta Albrecht from St.Gallen, moved into the newly built home on the remote Schrina-Hochrugg above Walenstadtberg. In 1927 his son Karl jun. born. From then on he made his living mainly as a branded connector. From the mid-1930s, PTT was his largest client, but he also worked for Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Portugal. Thanks to this long-term, reliable collaboration, Karl Bickel was also able to realize his life's work, the Paxmal (1924–1949), on Schrina-Hochrugg above Walenstadt.
Karl Bickel worked as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist and brand engraver in the field of tension between the two extremes of monumentality, long-distance effect and simplification as the design principles of the poster on the one hand and precision work under the microscope for stamp steel engraving on the other.
Bickel died in 1982 on Schrina-Hochrugg.
The graphic work
Right at the beginning of his professional career, drawing was his medium: first in Paul Bleuler's drawing studio, later in his own advertising studio. Figures, but also fonts, were drawn by hand. In the 1920s and 30s, Karl Bickel used his drawing talent primarily for graphic work.
His artistic interest developed parallel to his work as an illustrator and graphic designer. The numerous portraits, plant studies and depictions of mountains show the drawing as an independent means of expression and a continuous field of activity for Karl Bickel. In addition to Ferdinand Hodler, Michelangelo was also his role model, especially in depicting the human body. In his body studies and nude drawings he always looked for anatomical accuracy, not only working out this from the living model, but above all from anatomy books. He emphasized the strength of the muscles and usually portrayed people as energetic and vital.
With the means of the line, he not only worked out the volume of the human body, but also the plasticity of mountain landscapes, to which he sometimes gave a dynamic alien to their nature with his expressive line. He liked to use red chalk pencil, but also chalk, charcoal or ink. He converted numerous mountain drawings or portraits into engravings or etchings - other forms of designing with lines.
The plant studies, together with the drawings of tree and meadow landscapes, form an independent group of free works. These radiate a lightness that is rather unusual for Karl Bickel and are presented in a loose combination of black and white and colored pencil. Interestingly selected excerpts from a meadow landscape or a tree trunk draw the eye close to the earth. One recognizes the fine observation and delicate coloring, the richness of colors that reveals itself on closer inspection on a piece of overgrown rock, and the careful elaboration, which makes these sheets more than just studies. Similar to the representations of trees in colored pencil or charcoal, the draftsman creates an exciting relationship between gaps and condensed areas, a balance between illuminated surfaces and shady depressions, and thus achieves the plasticity and physicality that is a characteristic of his work.
The graphic work
With his own atelier for advertising graphics, Bickel soon made an excellent name for himself in the Zurich business world and was very successful: he created over 40 large posters between 1912 and 1943. His graphic talent was particularly in demand in the fashion industry. Before his first poster for the Seiden-Spinner fashion house was created in 1913, numerous catalogs had already been filled with his fashion drawings. But Bickel also designed posters and other advertising media for branded goods, culture and tourism.
In terms of printing technology, almost all of them are multicolored lithographs. The posters of the time owe their rich, intense colors to this process. Poster design and artistic development were closely linked. Many visual artists created graphic works of high quality, Ferdinand Hodler being a particularly important role model for Karl Bickel in this area as well.
In the early years, Bickel's work was strongly influenced by Art Nouveau. However, he soon left the ornamentation behind and came up with a flat color design and simplified forms. He succeeded in reducing it to expressive elements as well as the effect at a distance. Parallel to his development as a painter, monumental, abstract forms also appear in the posters.
The painterly work
For Karl Bickel, who was trained as a graphic artist, painting was just as much a part of his craft as drawing, because poster design at the beginning of the 20th century was mostly based on hand-made lithographs. Although painting was part of his professional activity from the start, a large part of his painterly work is concentrated in the last third of Karl Bickel's life. In particular, the “free” works that were not created in connection with the production of posters or in the vicinity of the Paxmal can be found in the later work.
Bickel remained largely committed to realistic painting, but tended to use symbolic or stylized representations in line with his role model, Ferdinand Hodler. He only took advantage of abstraction as a design option from around 1950 and above all in the field of landscape painting, to which he kept returning. A technique he used a lot was to build up the picture like a brick from color fields.
Stamp engraver
His specialty were the postage stamps, which he designed himself and executed in steel engraving. His great mastery in this area is particularly evident in portraits such as Ferdinand Hodler, the Pro Juventute stamp with the portrait of a girl after Anker, the stamp series “Portraits of Swiss Personalities”, “Swiss Landscapes” and “Technology and Landscape”. Particularly impressive is the portrait of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, which illustrates that Bickel dealt intensively with the depicted personality. Some of the stamps document technical developments in Switzerland, achievements that were of great general interest: the Gotthard Railway in the Leventina (postage stamp from 1924), the Sitter Viaducts (railway bridges) near St.Gallen, the suspension railway on the Säntis (built in 1933) and others such as alpine roads, high-voltage lines and power plants.
As the author of numerous postage stamps for Switzerland and abroad - Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Portugal - Bickel achieved his greatest artistic success in his forty years as a brand connector and achieved a corresponding level of awareness with a total circulation of eleven billion. The Swiss Post is its main client. Around 100 of his postage stamps were printed. The very first from 1923 was also the first airmail stamp in Switzerland and shows the upturned face of a pilot in the New Objectivity style. For the Swiss population of the time, this stamp was too modern due to its diagonal composition - it was soon taken out of the postal service.
Due to their widespread use, these works have impressed a wide audience. The graphic artist was well aware of this effect, because among the various motifs for his work as a brand engraver he also mentioned these: “I prick to have a collective effect. Anyone can buy my engravings. "
Paxmal - vision of peace in granite
In 1924 he began with the implementation of the Paxmals 738 925 / 222850 , which he fulfilled his promise to build a peace monument at recovery from tuberculosis. There are two world wars between Karl Bickel's vision of creating a place of contemplation dedicated to peace and the realization of the building. For 25 years, Karl Bickel worked on his own life's work high above the Walensee at the foot of the Churfirsten chain at an altitude of 1,300 meters.
At the center of his vision is the community linked by common ideals. An inscription on a column of the Paxmal explains that the work is dedicated to “the comprehensive, creative and good man”. Against the background of social changes caused by industrialization, social injustices and the breakup of family structures, many, especially artists, were looking for a life in keeping with nature at the beginning of the 20th century.
The stately building opens to the south and is only accessible from there. It is bordered on two sides by massive mosaic walls in which Karl Bickel captured his world of ideas in stone. Figures up to four meters tall embody his ideal of the life path of the individual, with the family as the core, and of their contribution to a functioning and harmonious society. As personal role models of Karl Bickel, Ferdinand Hodler, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Carl Spitteler represent the spiritual life on the right mosaic wall. Portraits of these well-known personalities can also be found in Bickel's stamp work. The mosaics are placed on massive walls 6 meters high and 16 meters long. Karl Bickel used different colored marble, travertine and granite from Italy, Belgium, Sweden and Czechoslovakia. The walls lead to the central element of the building, a temple room, which is also equipped with mosaics. The classicistic rectangular columns with a smooth surface create an aesthetic contrast to the coarse limestone walls, which were extracted from the surrounding landscape and which are also visually connected to it. The monumentality of the monument is further increased by the rock walls of the Churfirsten towering behind the temple.
In 1966, Karl Bickel gave the Paxmal as a gift from the PTT. In the spring of 2016, exactly 50 years to the day after Karl Bickel gave his Paxmal as a thank you for the longstanding recognition and cooperation of the then PTT, the Karl Bickel Foundation received the impressive life's work of the artist and graphic artist from the Swiss Post as a gift.
museum
The Museumbickel in Walenstadt was brought into being in 2002 by the Karl Bickel Foundation. In the meantime, it has established itself as a place for contemporary art, which also regularly offers a platform to artists in the region.
One exhibition per year is dedicated to the artist Karl Bickel, who gave the museum more than just a name. He himself had drafted plans to build a museum, before the Karl Bickel Foundation, founded in 2000, took up the idea and bought a hall in the former Walenstadt warehouse. The museum was opened 20 years after Bickel's death (1982).
Since June 2019 a room in the basement of the Museumbickel has been dedicated to the artist. In this cabinet, stamps, reliefs, drawings and paintings designed by Karl Bickel can be viewed all year round.
Web links
- Literature by and about Karl Bickel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Sandi Paucic: Bickel, Karl (senior). In: Sikart
- Biography on the website of the Museumsbickel
- Museum bunch in Walenstadt
literature
- Tapan Bhattacharya: Bickel, Karl. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Coordinates: 47 ° 8 '31.8 " N , 9 ° 16'12.8" E ; CH1903: 738923 / 222864
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bickel, Karl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss artist and graphic designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 13, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Zurich - Hirslanden |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 6, 1982 |
| Place of death | Walenstadt |