Paul Bodmer

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Paul Bodmer (* 18th August 1886 in Zurich- Wiedikon ; † 19th December 1983 in Zurich ) was a Swiss stage and mural painter of modernity .

Career

Bodmer was born the middle of three boys and grew up in a middle-class environment. His parents owned a clothing factory. If his parents had wanted, Paul should have become a pastor and therefore attended the industrial school at the time, now the Rämibühl canton school .

Inspired by watching the work of the theater painters in the Sihlhölzli Velodrom, he got his parents to train him as a theater painter with Albert Isler, where he met the painters Reinhold Kündig and Jakob Gubler.

After completing his apprenticeship, he moved to Germany with Kündig and Hermann Huber , where all three worked as backdrop painters in several cities. After a few years, Bodmer returned to Switzerland and settled in the remote village of Sternenberg in the Zurich Oberland , where he was tolerated as a strange outsider. As a freelance painter, he lived from hand to mouth. He was supported by the farmers who had leftover food come for him. Every now and then he took his pictures to galleries in Zurich, which bought his works for a ridiculous price. After he was able to sell some pictures at an exhibition, his reputation in the village also rose.

In Sternenberg he also met his future wife Emma Rauch, who taught at an eight-grade school in the hamlet of Orn am Bachtel . Like Bodmer, she came from Wiedikon. After the wedding in 1915, the couple moved to Oetwil am See in an old farmhouse, which later became the home of the painter Helen Dahm . Bodmer got a job as a teacher for decorative painting at the Zurich School of Applied Arts in 1917, where he worked until 1921. Although he liked to teach in and of itself, he found teaching as an annoying interruption to his work. His first son was born in 1916, the only daughter in 1917, and two further sons followed in 1921 and 1925.

Since the way into the city became too far for him over time, the couple and their three children looked for a new place of residence and found it in 1922 in the rural Zollikerberg, which at that time was barely developed . Getting started in one of six houses designed for artists was arduous; But thanks to the support of the Heer family in the neighboring Trichtenhauser Mühle , the family was able to gain a foothold in Zollikerberg. With the order to paint the frescoes in the cloister of the Fraumünster (1924–1934), Bodmer was finally relieved of his financial worries.

The autodidact Bodmer remained artistically active until his death. He acquired his knowledge by studying the pictures of the old masters and studying abroad, especially in Italy.

Works

Bodmer worked in Switzerland since 1910, where he joined the circle around Otto Meyer-Amden as a freelance painter . He was best known for his murals and frescoes. Several pictures caused public uproar: The naked figures in Paul Bodmer's wall paintings in the university building, which opened in 1914, were not acceptable to the plastic youth, it was said. and had to be painted over again, such as his abstract pictures in the zoological institute of the University of Zurich and in the Letten schoolhouse or the large mosaics in the municipal administration building in Walche. You can still see his frescoes in the cloister of the Fraumünster , which he created between 1924 and 1934. They show the legends surrounding the foundation of the Fraumünster Abbey.

In 1937 Bodmer created a fresco with floating angels in the New Church in Wollishofen , which had recently been built , and in 1939 the huge mural “O my homeland, o my fatherland” at the entrance to Höhenstrasse at Landi 39 in Zurich. In 1948 a mural was created in the Steigkirche in Schaffhausen .

In the parish hall of Zollikon, Bodmer painted the walls of the meeting room with frescoes from 1941 to 1945. One part shows the Zolliker conscripts who gathered in Zollikon before the Battle of Murten in 1476, the other part shows the donation of a Zolliker vineyard to Mechthild, the abbess of the Fraumünster in 1145.

Through his pictures, Bodmer made an important contribution to the renewal of Reformed religious painting in Switzerland. In 1947 he received the Art Prize of the City of Zurich.

In 2017, the partial estate of Paul Bodmer came to SIK-ISEA as a gift from the Zurich Central Library .

photos

  • Frescoes by Paul Bodmer in the cloister of the Fraumünster in Zurich

  • Frescoes in the Fraumünster cloister

  • Frescoes in the Fraumünster cloister

  • Interior of the new church Wollishofen with fresco

literature

  • Martin Bodmer and Heini Waser: Ein Zolliker Artist: Paul Bodmer in: Zolliker Jahrheft , Zollikon 1982, pp. 42–49.
  • Paul Bodmer: The sketchbook . Kranich-Verlag, Zollikon 1988
  • Alice Gertrud and Hans Rudolf Bosch-Gwalter (eds.): Drawings and studies on the frescoes by Paul Bodmer in the Zollikon parish hall . Kranich-Verlag, Zollikon 1987, ISBN 3-906640-01-9

Web links

Commons : Paul Bodmer  - collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ Helene Arnet: Suddenly Ms. Müller was standing naked in the university , Tages-Anzeiger , Zurich, April 16, 2014
  2. ↑ Philipp Meier: Zurich art scandal «Obscene graffiti» , NZZ , Zurich April 15, 2014
  3. ↑ Das Werk: Architektur und Kunst, 1932: Fresken in the Fraumünster cloister. Retrieved October 13, 2019 .
  4. ^ New frescoes in the Fraumünster cloister in Zurich by Paul Bodmer In: Architektur und Kunst Vol. 27, Issue 2, 1940, pp. 33–40
  5. ↑ SIK-ISEA, Swiss Art Archive: Nachklass von Paul Bodmer. Accessed March 31, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bodmer, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1983
Place of death Zurich