Max Gubler

Max Gubler (born May 26, 1898 in Zurich ; † July 29, 1973 there ) was a Swiss painter .

Life

Max Gubler was born the son of a decorative painter. His two older brothers Eduard Gubler (1891–1971) and Ernst Gubler (1895–1958) were also artists. Gubler trained as a primary school teacher in the Küsnacht seminar in the canton of Zurich from 1914 to 1918 , and in 1920 he moved to Berlin. From 1923 to 1927 he stayed mainly on the island of Lipari , where numerous pictures were taken. From 1930 to 1937 he lived in Paris before returning to Zurich, where he then worked continuously.

When the newly built Zurich Arts and Crafts Museum was inaugurated in 1933 , Max Gubler's main work, the monumental painting “Sicilian Interior”, created before 1930, adorned the stairwell. Since this work met with great approval, Gubler was asked to design an even larger mural especially for the stairwell. The “Sicilian Interior” then hung on loan for many years in the foyer of the Zurich Congress Center, which was partially renovated in 1938/1939 and later restored in the Reutenen secondary school.

Gubler later created a mural for the vestibule of the West Lecture Hall in Zurich University Hospital and a ceiling painting for the city theater in Schaffhausen.

Gubler was friends with his patron Han Coray . Another supporter of Gubler was Paul Cassirer .

After experiments in various contemporary styles, Gubler developed his own style for the first time on Lipari; his luminous landscapes can be assigned to impressionism . Later he turned more and more to abstract painting , but painted with strong colors for a long time. 1956 he created illustrations in colored chalk for Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea . Only in his late work did dark colors predominate.

Gubler showed his pictures in numerous museums a. a. 1959 in the Kunsthalle Basel . In 1963 an exhibition began in the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen, which until 1965 in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus , Munich, the Kunsthalle Bremen , the Städtisches Museum Trier, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Musée National d'Historie et de l ' 'Art migrated in Luxembourg . In 1969 his pictures were on view at the Kunstmuseum Bern .

In 1957 Gubler became seriously mentally ill, so that, with the consent of his wife Maria, he was admitted to the private Bellvue clinic in Kreuzlingen . In October 1958 he was moved to Préfargier near Marin on Lake Neuchâtel . In June 1961 Maria Gubler died of a heart condition. Max Gubler stopped his artistic activity that year. At his own request, he was transferred to the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurüch in 1968 . Max Gubler died there on July 29, 1973. After his death, the Kunsthaus Zürich dedicated a retrospective to him in 1975 .

For a long time, the heirs of the estate, the Max Gubler Foundation, kept the oeuvre produced in the psychiatry, which was created until 1961, under lock and key. These works were shown for the first time in the exhibition "The other Gubler. The unknown late work of the painter Max Gubler", which was shown and presented to the public in the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen from October 2014 to February 2015, was accompanied by an extensive publication. In 2015, the first extensive retrospective, which showed Max Gubler's work in all creative phases, took place at the Kunstmuseum Bern, which also included the later work in the overall context of the overall work.

literature

• FT Gubler: About the pictures by Max Gubler . In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 17, 1930, pp. 36–44.
• Gotthard Jedlicka : Max Gubler In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 32, 1945, pp. 1–8.
• Max Gubler at the Kunsthaus Zürich In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 40, Issue 1, 1953, pp. 4–5.
• Hans Steiner: Max Gubler in the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen. In: Architektur und Kunst , Vol. 51, 1964, pp. 305–307.
• Reclam's Artist Lexicon . Stuttgart 1979 (2nd edition 1995), ISBN 3-15-010412-2 .

• Gerhard Piniel: Max Gubler's image of man . In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 53, 1978, pp. 84-109. ( e-periodica.ch )
• S. Rüttimann: Gubler, Max . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 64, Saur, Munich a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23031-8 , pp. 269-271.
• Matthias Frehner, Daniel Spanke, Beat Stutzer (eds.): Max Gubler. A life's work. Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-85881-454-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Gubler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Eduard, Ernst and Max Gubler Foundation
• maxgubler.ch
• Max Gubler at Galerie m Bochum
• Viola Radlach: Gubler, Max. In: Sikart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://gublerstiftung.ch/6-2
2. ↑ Max Gubler's monumental work "Sicilian Interior"
3. ^ Wall paintings by Max Gubler in Zurich
4. ^ Ceiling painting for the Schaffhausen City Theater
5. ↑ Urs Steiner: Han Coray. Retrieved August 2, 2019 . 
6. ↑ 1959, exhibition in the Kunsthalle Basel
7. ^ ^{A b} Frehner, Matthias ,, Spanke, Daniel ,, Stutzer, Beat ,, Brand Claussen, Bettina., Claussen, Peter Cornelius .: Max Gubler. A life's work . 1st edition. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-85881-454-8 .
8. ^ ^{A b} Claussen, Peter Cornelius ,, Gubler, Max, 1898–1973 ,, Max Gubler Foundation ,: Max Gubler: Painting in the crisis: the unknown late work . Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-85881-437-1 .