Otto Baumberger

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Wall painting 1926, Zurich Wiedikon train station
Zurich-Wiedikon station in 1926, mineral paint on lime plaster

Otto Baumberger (born May 21, 1889 in Altstetten , † December 26, 1961 in Weiningen ) was a Zurich poster artist , painter and set designer . He is considered to be the innovator of Swiss poster art and an important representative of Swiss Expressionism . From 1931 he was a professor at the ETH Zurich .

Life

Otto Baumberger grew up in Altstetten near Zurich in a middle-class environment. After graduating from school, he began an apprenticeship as a designer (textile draftsman) in 1904 , which he soon broke off. By 1907 he completed a three-year apprenticeship as a lithographer with Emil Winter in Zurich. During the apprenticeship, he attended the School of Applied Arts Zurich (now part of the Zurich University of the Arts ) under Eduard Stiefel and private Stadler school. A grant from the city of Zurich allowed him from 1908 to 1910 stays at the School of Applied Arts in Munich , the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Académie Colarossi in Paris . In 1910 he first took part in an exhibition by the Zurich Art Society .

From 1911 he was employed as a draftsman and artistic director at the Wolfsberg Art Salon , a large lithography company with an attached gallery. From 1913 until the beginning of the First World War he worked as a freelance graphic artist in Paris, after which he worked in Zurich for all the major Zurich printing companies. For the Swiss National Exhibition in 1914 designed Baumberger different artists postcards and for the catalog basic production the front page.

In 1915 he married Hanni Manz, from whom he separated again in 1926. In 1916 Otto Baumberger began teaching, part-time as an assistant teacher at the arts and crafts school. In 1920 he went to Berlin for a few months , where he designed the sets for the Urfaust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for Max Reinhardt . He refused a permanent position in Berlin. However, he realized other sets at the Zurich City Theater .

Today Otto Baumberger is best known as a poster artist. Between the 1910s and 1940s, he created around 230 posters for a wide variety of clients. He achieved dubious fame with his poster against women's suffrage from 1920, but his advertisements for Swiss brands such as PKZ and Jecklin as well as the posters from the time of the Second World War for the Red Cross are also known . From 1922 to 1927 he also worked for the satirical magazine Nebelspalter, both as a picture editor and as a draftsman. In 1927 he married the graphic artist Johanna Pulfer, their son Rudolf Caspar was born in 1929. Starting in the 1930s, Otto Baumberger undertook extensive trips almost every year to the Soviet Union (1932), to various European countries, to the Middle East, to the Canary Islands and to Madeira. From the thousands of travel sketches, he created watercolors and oil paintings in his home studio. Baumberger became popular with his frieze on Swiss history on the Landi in 1939 . He was also valued for his illustrations and book covers, including the Bible and works of world literature such as the Odyssey or Dante's Divine Comedy . In addition, by the end of his life he created around 200 abstract compositions that are largely unknown today.

In 1931, at the instigation of Otto Rudolf Salvisberg , Baumberger received a teaching assignment for new subjects at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich: “Drawing from nature” and “The color in architecture”. In 1947 he was appointed associate professor by the ETH. During his lifetime, he was celebrated with exhibitions at the Zurich Kunsthaus (1949) and in the graphic collection of the ETH (1959). Otto Baumberger died at the age of 72 in his home in Weiningen.

various

  • Most of Otto Baumberger's oeuvre, which includes around 10,000 works, is owned by the collector Arnold Erni (Basel), who publishes parts of it. The ETH Graphic Collection, the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich have other collections .
  • Part of the estate with numerous book illustrations is in the Zurich Central Library .
  • From October 2008 to February 2009, an exhibition on Otto Baumberger took place in the Zurich Central Library, and his posters were also shown in the Museum of Design in Zurich.

literature

  • Otto Baumberger: The inner path of a painter. From personal records . Rascher, Zurich 1963.
  • Simone Gojan: Otto Baumberger . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 1, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 134 f.
  • Martin Heller; Christina Reble (Ed.): Otto Baumberger, 1889–1961: [Exhibition], Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, May 26 to July 17, 1988, Gewerbemuseum Basel / Museum für Gestaltung, August 6 to October 9, 1988, German poster -Museum Essen, November 20, 1988 to January 22, 1989 . School of Design, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-907065-27-1 .

Web links

Commons : Otto Baumberger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Academy of Fine Arts, Munich: Otto Baumberger, matriculation book. Retrieved September 25, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Expo Archive: Artist postcards Swiss National Exhibition Bern 1914. Accessed September 25, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Expo archive: Urproduktion catalog, Swiss National Exhibition, Bern 1914. Accessed on September 25, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Baumberger, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss graphic artist and stage designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Altstetten , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1961
Place of death Weiningen , Canton of Zurich, Switzerland