Rudolf Haesler

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Rudolf Häsler (born July 29, 1927 in Interlaken , Canton Bern , † January 16, 1999 in Sant Cugat del Vallès , Province of Barcelona ) was a Swiss painter, graphic artist and draftsman. From 1957 to 1969 he lived in Cuba and was responsible for the national development of the arts and crafts as an economic branch after the revolution until 1963 (national director for arts and crafts of INIT)

Life

Rudolf Häsler grew up on the Bödeli in the Bernese Oberland as the son of a Postbus chauffeur and a Swiss native who was born in Poland . After primary school, the family moved to Solothurn , where he attended secondary school and, after finishing school, attended the teachers' seminar there, where he belonged to the Amicitia Solodernenis academic student association at the canton school . From 1947 he worked as a primary school teacher in Klus (Balsthal) . From 1948 to 1951 he was a primary school teacher in Boningen SO.

At the same time he took painting lessons and went on various study trips through Europe. In 1952 he gave up teaching to devote himself entirely to art. He traveled to the Algerian Sahara in 1952/1953 and lived in the Andalusian cities of Seville and Granada from 1953 to 1955 . Further trips took him to Italy , Yugoslavia , again across North Africa to the Sahara and back to Andalusia. In 1956 in Granada he met the Cuban María Dolores Soler, the model of a painter friend, whom he accompanied on a trip across the USA to her hometown of Santiago de Cuba in 1957 and married there. In 1958, son Rodolfo was born in Santiago, the first of the couple's four children. Since Häsler was immediately fascinated by the country, he decided to stay in Cuba instead of the planned two weeks longer. In 1958 he went on a study trip to Haiti and then stayed in Santiago de Cuba until 1959.

Cuba

In Cuba, Häsler experienced the climax of the Cuban Revolution , in which the city of Santiago and its region were of central importance. He shared the spirit of optimism at the time of the victory of the rebels led by Fidel Castro in early 1959 and sought active participation in social change. He initially joined a group of artists and architects who dedicated themselves to art in architecture on behalf of the Ministry of Defense . After studying local traditions, he then developed a concept for building a nationwide ceramics industry, which was accepted and implemented by the government. He became managing advisor at the newly founded National Institute for Applied Arts in the capital Havana and after the resignation of his superior director he was promoted to director in February 1960.

Behind the Argentine revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara as the then Minister of Industry, with whom he had frequent professional contacts, Häsler was the highest-ranking foreign functionary in the Cuban state. In addition to Cuban artists and intellectuals, he came into contact with prominent foreigners who were visiting the country at the time, including Pablo Neruda and Errol Flynn . He was close friends with Castro's longtime personal assistant, Celia Sánchez . His initiatives for the development of the arts and crafts were implemented, for example, in the production of ceramic items, hammocks and musical instruments and created several thousand new jobs.

The rapprochement of the Cuban government to the Soviet Union led, under Guevara's leadership, to a rapidly advancing orientation towards the real socialist model of the strictly bureaucratic planned economy . At the same time, Fidel Castro restricted civil liberties more and more and introduced a totalitarian and militaristic model of society based on obedience to orders. These experiences led to Häsler's increasing disillusionment with the leaders of the revolution he initially supported. His workplace was searched several times by the secret police. After he said he did not want to carry out an absurd special plan by Celia Sánchez, he fell out of favor and was relieved of his post in 1963. At the instigation of the Communist Party , a falsified curriculum vitae was published that slandered him as a former SS member in Hitler's Germany and as a current CIA spy in the service of the USA.

After his impeachment, he worked in his home in Havana as an artist and artisan and supported his family through various commissioned work, especially ceramics. He was ostracized by the authorities as a «dissident painter». In 1967 he stayed in Mexico to study wall painting art there . After a grueling bureaucratic approval process, he and his family managed to leave Cuba in January 1969. Häsler recorded his experiences in Cuba in his book Kuba - Freiheit oder Terror: A painter experiences the revolution , published in 1984 .

Spain

In 1969, Häsler moved with his family to Mojácar in the province of Almería and from 1970 lived until the end of his life in Sant Cugat del Vallès in the province of Barcelona and was successful as a painter. In the 1990s he went on study trips to Algeria (Tassili, Djanet, Timimoun, Adrar), Tangier , Vienna and Turkey . His children Rodolfo , Alejandro , Juan Carlos and Ana are artistically active in the fields of poetry, painting and singing on a professional level. On January 16, 1999, he died of cardiac arrest.

Artistic creation

Häsler was best known for his realistic paintings , some of which were also described as hyperrealistic . He had dedicated himself to this style, which he implemented in oil and acrylic paintings and drawings, since the late 1960s. His art was exhibited at the contemporary art fair ARCO Madrid in 1986 and in a major retrospective in Barcelona in 1989. Since many of his paintings were created during his travels through the countries of the Arab world , Häsler was thematically assigned to the school of the orientalists . Since his death in particular, Häsler's work has often been exhibited together with realistic paintings by his sons Alejandro and Juan Carlos.

A Swiss real estate dealer and gallery owner acquired around a third of the entire work, mostly directly from the artist's family. His gallery Bromer Kunst has been researching and documenting Häsler's life and work since 2014 in order to make him known to a larger audience. The first results since 2016 have been exhibitions in Interlaken and Roggwil and a 50-minute documentary about Häsler shown at the Roggwil exhibition.

Awards

  • 1988: Culture Prize of the Canton of Solothurn
  • 2018: Sant Cugat was granted honorary citizenship on January 29th

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1956: Olten Art Museum
  • 1958: Various exhibitions in Cuba
  • 1973: Galerie von Mühlenen, Bern
  • 1975: Les Editions Visat Paris; Gallery 2000 Berlin; Dierks Gallery Aarhus; Spaced Galleries New York
  • 1981: Grande Realistas. La Pedrera Gallery Barcelona; Palais Besenval Solothurn
  • 1986: Arco International Art Exhibition, Madrid
  • 1997: CCCB Barcelona: Realitat figurada . Department de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya
  • 1998: Cervantes Institute, Tangier Morocco
  • 1999: Realisme a Catalunya , Center d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona
  • 2007: Big retrospective for the 80th birthday, Pimentel Palace, Valladolid and Kunsthaus Grenchen
  • 2010: Retrospective on the 10th anniversary of death, Museum Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona
  • 2016 The magic of the real. Kunsthaus Interlaken
  • 2016/2017: Rudolf Häsler - retrospective. Galerie Bromer Kunst , Roggwil
  • 2017: Rudolf Häsler, Homenatge en el 90è aniversari del seu naixement (1927-1999). Cloister of the Convent of Sant Cugat del Valles, Barcelona

Publications

literature

  • Rudolf Häsler - Life and Work. Habegger, Derendingen 1982, ISBN 3-85723163-7 .
  • Rudolf Haesler. 1971-89. La obra / The work, Imagen y texto / Image and text. Hydra, Barcelona 1989, (Spanish / German)
  • Rudolf Haesler. Exhibition catalog. Lunwerg, Barcelona 2010, ISBN 978-84-9785-698-0 . (Catalan / Spanish)
  • Rudolf Häsler, Alejandro Häsler: Quiasma - la mirada del otro. Exhibition catalog. Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterraneo, 2003, ISBN 978-8-49325493-3 . (spanish / french / english)
  • Rudolf Häsler, a citizen of the world. Artist monograph with texts by Häsler and 13 other authors, Edition Bromer, Roggwil 2017, ISBN 978-3-03-306276-4
  • Rudolf Häsler, Homenatge en el 90è Aniversari del seu naixement (1927-1999) . Exhibition catalog. Sant Cugat Town Hall, Barcelona 2017 (Catalan)

documentary

The documentary Coca Castro is a film biography made in 2016 by Christian Herren and Daniel Bleuer about the life and art of Rudolf Häsler. Contributors included Marcus Signer , Irene Gondel, Alejandro Häsler and Luc Chessex . The world premiere took place on November 12, 2016 at Bromer Kunst in Roggwil on the occasion of an exhibition opening about Häsler.

The film Rudolf Häsler - Odisea de una vida by Enrique Ros documents life, family and artistic development as a forerunner of the new realism. It premiered on January 28, 2018 at the Solothurn Film Festival.

Web links

  • bromer art gallery in Roggwil BE : artist portrait
  • Stefan Regez: The incredible story of the Interlaken painter Rudolf Häsler in Cuba , seven-part series of articles about Rudolf Häsler from the summer of 2003, in: Jungfrau Zeitung , accessed on November 19, 2012:
* Part 1: The planned 14 days became 12 years.
* Part 2: Landed in the middle of the Cuban Revolution.
* Part 3: Rudolf Häsler becomes director of arts and crafts.
* Part 4: One day Pablo Neruda came by.
* Part 5: Rudolf Häsler, you have fallen from grace.
* Part 6: Those in power don't have time to think.
* Part 7: My father was always an artist to me. ,
* updated summary of August 10, 2006: "Rudolf Häsler, you have fallen from grace"

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Quiasma: la mirada del otro (PDF; 843 kB), prospectus for an exhibition in the Palacio de Pimentel, Diputación de Valladolid 2003 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ The Solothurn painter Rudolf Häsler died in Barcelona. In: Neue Mittelland Zeitung of January 19, 1999, accessed via Der Amicitianer on November 22, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c d Andreas Heller: Portrait - Rudolf Häsler, Fidels director. In: NZZ Folio of August 10, 2006, accessed on November 19, 2012.
  4. ↑ a b Stefan Regez: «One day Pablo Neruda came over». In: Jungfrau Zeitung of July 16, 2003, accessed on November 19, 2012.
  5. ↑ a b c Stefan Regez: "Rudolf Häsler, you have fallen out of favor". In: Jungfrau Zeitung of August 10, 2006, accessed on November 19, 2012.
  6. ↑ The Solothurn painter Rudolf Häsler died in Barcelona. In: Neue Mittelland Zeitung of January 19, 1999, accessed via Der Amicitianer on November 22, 2012.
  7. ↑ Stefanie Christ: The Rediscovered. in: Langenthaler Tagblatt of November 11, 2016, accessed on February 8, 2017.
  8. ^ Bromer Kunst and Porte Blanche: Rudolf Häsler: A Bernese Oberlander becomes a citizen of the world. Information brochure on ExploreDoc, accessed February 8, 2017.
  9. ↑ Alexander Sury: Fidels director for applied arts. in: Der Bund from April 2, 2016, accessed on February 8, 2017.
  10. ↑ Nora Devenish: Rudolf Häsler's life is filmed. In: Jungfrau Zeitung of March 10, 2016, accessed on February 8, 2017.
  11. ^ City website
  12. ^ Anne-Marie Günter: Between Reality and Magic. In: Berner Zeitung of March 19, 2016, accessed on February 8, 2017.
  13. ↑ Flyer for the exhibition Die Magie des Realen ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bromer-kunst.ch
  14. ^ Fränzi Zwahlen-Saner: This almost forgotten hyperrealist was an artist and revolutionary. In: Aargauer Zeitung from November 12, 2016
  15. ↑ René Brogli, Wolfgang Tough: Rudolf Hasler, exhibition opening retrospective. Bromer Art, 2017.
  16. ↑ Bromer Art: COCA-CASTRO - Official Trailer (2016) About Rudolf Hasler, with Marcus Signer, Art Documentary. YouTube , September 15, 2016, accessed February 7, 2017 .
  17. ^ Rudolf Häsler: Bern artist makes politics in Cuba. In: SRF.ch , Regional Journal Bern Friborg Wallis from November 12, 2016; Retrieved February 8, 2017.
  18. ↑ Stefanie Christ: The Rediscovered. Berner Zeitung, November 11, 2016; accessed on March 17, 2017.
  19. ^ Nora Devenish: "Coca-Castro" celebrates its premiere. In: Jungfrauzeitung , November 10, 2016; accessed on March 17, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Haesler, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Interlaken
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1999
Place of death Sant Cugat del Vallès