Martin Thönen

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Martin Thönen at his exhibition in Bern in December 2016, Photo: Thomas Seilnacht

Martin Thönen (born June 5, 1942 in Thun ) is a Swiss wood cutter and graphic artist . His work mainly includes woodcuts and illustrations for books and calendars.

Stations in life

Martin Thönen grew up with his two brothers in Thun , where he went to school. His parents were Charles Thönen and Marie Mathilde Thönen-Gaberelle. A key experience for the fourteen-year-old was a visit to the Nock Circus: when he watched the clown behind the circus tent making circus posters in linocut , he knew that he wanted to be creative in his future job. From 1958 he did an apprenticeship as a typesetter in Unterseen and in the arts and crafts school in Bern (today school for design). This was followed by activities as a typographer and graphic designer for publishers and printing companies in Moutier, Montreux and Geneva. From 1962 he went to the schools for design in Bern, Vevey and Geneva as well as to the photo typesetting school in Essen (Germany) and then to the technical school for the printing industry in Bern. He traveled and studied to Morocco (1965), Egypt and the Middle East (1967) as well as to Peru (1971) and Indonesia (1978). But he also traveled extensively to the nearby Emmental.

In 1965, Martin Thönen bought his first printing press. In 1970 he married Edith Schaffer. In 1971 he was accepted into the international association of wood cutters XYLON . Edition XYLON 73 (1987) is dedicated to Martin Thönen. It contains eight colored, figurative original woodcuts. In 1973 Martin and Edith Thönen founded the Art + Vision gallery in the old town of Bern , this place then became the center of life for the Thönen couple. The national and international breakthrough came in 1982: For example, he was able to take part in a collective exhibition in the Künstlerhaus Vienna , and he was represented at the 10th art exhibition in Trubschachen. In Trubschachen he showed, among other things, two two and a half meters wide, five-part woodcut panoramas Sonnseite, Emmental (1979) and Ufer (1979), with which he received a lot of attention. In the following years he was able to take part in several biennials.

From 1986 Thönen started printing his woodcuts in his printing studio and publishing house TypoPresse in Schmitten . A book by Marc Kuhn about Martin Thönen's annual woodcut calendars was published by this publisher in 1989. In 1997, the jury decided to join the Swiss Mountain Painters' Guild (GSBM). At the annual exhibitions there in 2007, for example, he showed the Matterhorn woodcut in the Alpine Museum in Zermatt . This motif was printed in three colors as a four-sided fanfold and a cube. It shows the east, north, west and south sides of the famous mountain. In 2000 Katja Nau published a book about the wood cutter Martin Thönen. In 2005 he exhibited at the international Xylon exhibition in the donation house in Reutlingen. From 2000 to 2008 Martin Thönen was President of XYLON. Martin Thönen is also a member of the Swiss professional association Visarte (formerly GSMBA).

Gallery owner and teacher

Martin and Edith Thönen exhibited numerous other wood cutters in their gallery in Bern, for example Frans Masereel (1973), Etienne Clare (1975), HAP Grieshaber (1989), Utagawa Hiroshige (1993), Ernst Ramseier (2001), Alice Gafner ( 2011) or Franz Bucher (2012).

From 2000 to 2008 Martin Thönen taught at the Bern University of the Arts and until 2009 at the Bern and Biel School of Design. There he was able to pass the old craft on to the younger generation. Martin Thönen gave courses at the Migros School M-Art until 2010. The printing block group developed from the students of these courses in 1974. From 1990 until it was closed in 2016, he gave numerous woodcutter courses at the Thun painting school.

Martin Thönen's work

Martin Thönen, the former President of XYLON, is one of the most important wood cutters in Switzerland. Since 1966 he has been printing a calendar with 13 different original woodcuts every year. More than 50 editions have been published, each with a different topic. The first edition of the calendar for 1966 was dedicated to Morocco . Topics such as water (1990), clouds (1991), forest (1995), ferns (1996), reeds (2000) and mangroves (2017) are dealt with in a typical way by the wood cutter. Martin Thönen's woodcuts are poetic compositions that emphasize the essence of a landscape, a material or a body in their intricate lines and shapes. The woodcuts are in one, two or three colors, sometimes even in five colors. With the selected colors he achieves a reinforcement of the skeletal layers so that the woodcuts acquire an unusual depth effect despite their natural flatness. As with Franz Bucher , the landscapes become magical landscapes, or organic motifs appear alive. His representations testify to "freedom and imagination". Each woodcut by Martin Thönen is individual, but at the same time the series in the variants emphasize similarities so that the motifs reinforce each other. With his woodcuts, Thönen has created a visual language by which you can immediately recognize him.

Martin Thönen's bibliophile books and portfolios are also of importance. In 1989 he received a prize in the competition for the “most beautiful Swiss books”. Particularly noteworthy is the publication of Pablo Neruda's 20 love poems from 2001. The large format edition in German and Spanish is printed on fine paper, the 20 woodcuts with erotic depictions are just as passionate as the poems of the great poet. Another remarkable work is the bibliophile work TanzZeit from 2011. Martin Thönen made 150 figures in individual printing blocks for this purpose. Up to 12 figures were combined per sheet. The “figures printed one on top of the other” represent the movements that “are assigned to a particular dance”. In addition, there are also individual print compositions by the dancers, each of which only exists once.

The multi-part panoramas exhibited in Trubschachen in 1982 set standards in wood cutting technology. Another five-part work, Schrattenfluh , was presented to the public for the first time in 1978 by the Kunstverein Amt Entlebuch in the Schüpfheim Cantonal School . Shore shows a shoreline landscape at a lake, in which the trees on the shore are reflected in the lake. The printing inks are laid out in ocher or olive tones. The wood cutter saw the trees at Greifensee . In front of his inner eye he develops this composition in retrospect and implements it by hand while cutting into three wooden plates (printing blocks) that are used for the three-color printing. Fifteen large wooden panels must be cut for each of the five-part panoramas. Martin Thönen produced a total of around 3,000 printing blocks.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 1978 Gallery Bad Schinznach AG
  • 1982 Art Museum Thun Transparencies
  • 1982–1986 Galerie Planque, Lausanne
  • 1990, 2009 and 2015 Galerie Rosengarten, Thun (1990 together with works by Etienne Clare )
  • 1991 Gallery 4, Basel
  • 1992 Galerie Farb, Worb
  • 1994, 2001 and 2008 La Hotte, Les Diablerets
  • 1996 cultural space, Littau LU
  • 1996 and 2004 Sieberhuus, Lyss
  • 2006 Galerie du Château de Vullierens
  • 2007 and 2016 Galerie du Musée de Payerne

Collective exhibitions (selection)

  • 1975 Exhibition of the GSMBA, Section Bern and the art collection of the city of Thun in the Thunerhof, Schadau Castle and city parks, Thun
  • 1976 14th Exposition suisse d'art alpin, Musée Jenisch Vevey, Club Alpin Suisse
  • 1979 St. Katharina Monastery (St. Gallen)
  • 1982 International woodcut, Künstlerhaus Vienna
  • 1982 10th exhibition in Trubschachen
  • 1986 17th Esposizione svizzera d'arte alpina, Villa Malpensata, Lugano
  • 1989 IX Bienal International De Arte, Valparaiso Chile
  • 1989 Swiss woodcut - today, Gewerbemuseum Winterthur (Xylon exhibition)
  • 1998 5th art exhibition, organized by Hans Suter in Hondrich (with Fred Stauffer, Paul Freiburghaus , Knud Jacobsen, among others )
  • 2001 Art Forum, Montreux
  • 2005 International exhibition of the Xylon in the Spendhaus Reutlingen, as well as in Winterthur, St. Pölten, Chemnitz, Mistelbach, Landeck and Schwetzingen
  • 2010 Triennale de Chamalieres
  • 2011 jubilation Xylon, St. Gallen and Kunsthaus Grenchen
  • 2012 annual exhibition of the GSBM, Kunsthalle Ziegelhütte , Appenzell
  • 2015 When Continents Meet, Ashok Jain Gallery, New York

Prizes and awards

  • 1965 and 1966 Federal grant for applied arts
  • 1965 Scholarship from the Federation of Migros Cooperatives, Zurich
  • 1967 Prix du salon des Jeunes, Geneva
  • 1989 The most beautiful Swiss books

Works in collections (selection)

  • Swiss National Library, Bern
  • Canton Bern
  • Art collection of the city of Thun
  • Kunsthallen, Uppsala
  • Trade Museum, Basel
  • Le Locle Museum
  • Ville de Genève
  • Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich
  • Municipal Art Museum Spendhaus, Reutlingen
  • Museum of Payerne

Web links

Literature about Martin Thönen (selection)

  • Galli-Dejaco, Dona: Art lets shavings fly - visit to Martin Thönen's woodcut studio , published in: Techniques of Printmaking, Berner Zeitung November 17, 1983.
  • Cut - Printed - La Lumière du Bois , Edition Xylon Verlag, Hauterive 1986.
  • Kuhn, Marc: Martin Thönen, original woodcut calendar , TypoPresse 1989.
  • Kuhn, Marc: The wood cutter Martin Thönen , in Graphische Kunst, Issue 46, 1/1996, p. 26, Curt Visel Verlag, Memmingen 1996.
  • Nau, Katja: Martin Thönen woodcuts , Verlag TypoPresse 2000.
  • Tuma, Annemarie: An ancient printing process - The woodcut , in: Wald und Holz, edition 5/2004, p. 58.
  • Zehnder-Jörg, Silvia: Kunstvoll, 1848–2006, 109 artists, 107 works , Deutschfreiburger Heimatkundeverein 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Marc Kuhn: Martin Thönen, original woodcut calendar , Typo Presse 1989.
  2. ↑ XYLON - page about the member Martin Thönen, accessed on December 2, 2016.
  3. ^ Art exhibition in Trubschachen
  4. ↑ Marie-Louise Zimmermann: Jubilee Show as Legacy , published in: Der Bund 133rd year, No. 140 from June 19, 1982, page 2.
  5. ^ Official exhibition catalog of the 10th painting exhibition in Trubschachen, June 19 to July 11, 1982.
  6. ^ Website of the Swiss Mountain Painters Guild , accessed on December 2, 2016.
  7. ^ Matterhorn, Westseite (2006) on the website of the Gilde Schweizer Bergmaler, accessed on December 3, 2016.
  8. ↑ Katja Nau: Martin Thönen woodcuts , Verlag TypoPresse 2000.
  9. ↑ 40 years of exhibitions for contemporary wood printing , Galerie Art + Vision, Bern 2013.
  10. ^ United Old Town Bar, Bern, visit to the woodcut studio , published in Brunne Zytig, 4/2014, page 3.
  11. ^ Printing block group
  12. ^ I. Rawer: Lecture at the vernissage in Bad Schinznach on September 23, 1978.
  13. ↑ Creating standards for book art , published in: Bündner Zeitung of March 23, 1990.
  14. ↑ Neruda, Pablo: 20 love poems and a song of desperation , illustrated with 20 colored woodcuts by Martin Thönen, TypoPresse, Schmitten 2001.
  15. ↑ TanzZeit 25 Bibliophiles book TypoPresse, Schmitten 2011
  16. ↑ Jürgen Schweitzer: TanzZeit von Martin Thönen , published in: Graphische Kunst, International Journal for Book Art and Graphics, Issue 2/2011, p. 26, Curt Visel Verlag Memmingen.
  17. ↑ Trubschachen
  18. ↑ Haab, Margrit: Das Entlebuch artistically , published in: Vaterland 245, page 25, October 21, 1978.
  19. ↑ Ufer , shown in: Cut - Printed - La Lumière du Bois , Edition Xylon Verlag, Hauterive 1986.
  20. ↑ Art and Craft in Woodcut , published in: Aargauer Tagblatt, September 29, 1978 edition.
  21. ↑ Data on exhibitions, awards and works in collections on Martin Thönen's website , accessed on December 2, 2016.
  22. ↑ Trubschachen
  23. ↑ City Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen (publisher): triple, new woodcuts by Xylon from Germany, Austria and Switzerland , Reutlingen 2005
  24. ↑ Martin Thönen at the GSBM exhibition in the Kunsthalle Ziegelhütte, available at: http://gsbm.ch/d/träger/thoenen.html?yr=2012
  25. ↑ exhibition catalog, Curated by Nicol Rodriguez, available at http://ashokjaingallery.com
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personal data
SURNAME Thönen, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss graphic artist and illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Tuna