Rudolf Urech-Seon

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Rudolf Urech-Seon (born February 18, 1876 in Seon AG ; † July 23, 1959 there ) was a Swiss painter . He signed his pictures with the monogram “RU-S”, “Urech-Seon” or “Rud. Urech-Seon ”, always with the addition“ -Seon ”, to distinguish it from the Basel painter and graphic artist Rudolf Urech (1888–1951).

Life

Rudolf Urech-Seon comes from a family of craftsmen. His father was a plumber and a gas lighter on the side. Urech-Seon broke off his district education after the fourth grade and started an apprenticeship as a painter in Bauma ZH . The apprenticeship was followed by a period of traveling boys in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. During this time, the first landscape watercolors, sketches and copies of colored art cards were created.

After the years of traveling, Urech-Seon founded a painting business in his place of birth, which made a name for itself in particular with decorative paintings, marbling , graining, etc. He designed flags for clubs and painted backdrops for theaters . On May 9, 1905, Urech-Seon married Marie Baumann (1876–1958) von Langnau ZH , a dressmaker and daughter of a Seon carpenter. The marriage resulted in two daughters: Margrit Urech, teacher (1906–1991) and Emmi Gutscher-Urech (1920–2014), teacher, pastor's wife and adult educator. Both later provided material support to their father, who was over 70 years old.

Urech-Seon himself writes about his career: «From a young age to an artist's goal, at school no promotional drawing, no signposts, no money, I learned the painting profession, traveled in Germany, Austria, founded a painting business in my hometown, finally got money and my childhood dream came true in 1913. " During the winter months 1914–1916 he enrolled at the Munich Academy and learned painting and drawing in Hermann Groeber's (1865–1935) class . In the spring of 1916, Urech-Seon did his active service , according to his pencil sketches in the Jura .

From 1918 he worked in his own studio on the Seetalbahn (canceled in 2010, today Seetalstrasse 52), his father-in-law's workshop. All his life he complained about the lighting conditions in the former carpenter's workshop. His apartment was on the opposite side of the Seetalbahn (Friedhofweg 270, today Chrischonaweg 3), where his wife and her tailoring studio ( Urech-Baumann, Robes ) made a living.

During the summer, Urech-Seon often worked in a plein-air studio improvised from sheets in the garden next to his house, but as often as possible in the field, in the vicinity of the Seetal with its topographical peculiarities, the local flora, the moorland of the Aabach as well as the elements of industrialization penetrating the landscape: railroad tracks, roads, telephone lines, factories, etc.

Since 1920 Urech-Seon was a member of the Aargau section of the Society of Swiss Painters, Sculptors and Architects (GSMBA). With increasing distance from landscape painting under the spell of Ferdinand Hodler and the German Impressionists, an alienation from the colleagues in the section went hand in hand. Urech-Seon continued on his way from pure natural painting to cubist approaches and symbolist painting to concrete painting . It was not until 1947 that he was accepted into the “Allianz” artists' association in Zurich that he gained certain recognition. Urech-Seon remained artistically active until a few weeks before his death; The last pictures were taken in 1959. After a brief illness, he died on July 23, 1959. His grave is in the Seon cemetery.

plant

The first autodidactic works were created in the 1890s, mostly in tempera on cardboard. They already show an amazing modernity. By combining parts of the landscape into color areas, the later urge towards abstraction is already indicated.

The painterly and graphic work of Rudolf Urech-Seons, created after training in Munich , is divided into four phases by Annelise Zwez : early landscape painting (1918-1925/1930), geometric abstraction (1925/1930-1939/1940), surrealist form-finding ( 1940–1946 / 1948) and free composition (1945 / 1948–1959). Urech-Seon mostly worked in oil on canvas, sketches and smaller pictures by v. a. of the early work were often made on cardboard. His sketchbooks, as well as pen and ink, gouaches and red chalk and charcoal drawings are numerous . His painterly oeuvre includes around 1000 pictures, the drawing around 500 works.

Early landscape painting (1918–1925 / 1930)

After years of training at the Munich Academy , Urech-Seon settled in a new studio in 1918. The works of the 1920s are dedicated to the area around Seon, but the path that will lead away from German Impressionism is already being drawn. It is a learning to deal with colors and shapes. Hilly World , named by the artist himself in 1923 and not after the exact field name as earlier, already shows clearly in which direction the painterly development will go. Urech-Seon himself noted: a motif in nature had to “say something to me in lines and colors, only then did the colors come, but they also came, and then rhythms, movement. What most painters see in nature, I left behind and looked for new beauties and found them ».

Geometric abstraction (1925 / 1930–1939 / 1940)

The foreseeable upheaval comes around 1931, with a second factor having a radically accelerating effect: the former enthusiasm for Germany turned into skepticism about National Socialism and finally into horrified rejection. In 1931 he noted on a sketch pad: «The intellect of the three dead confederates. The same line of thought: true art is born from within, true art has nothing to do with politics, politics is just a side effect ». The brief note is at the same time testimony to Urech-Seon's humor, which never left him until the end and, above all, breaks through again and again in his mature works. A cubist phase follows , which is close to works of the Bauhaus . But while the Cubists used classic motifs, first of all the still life, to show that they were interested in a radically new language, and the purists painted industrial products because they wanted to emphasize the connection between art and modern civilization, Urech-Seon was content with this the pear tree and arable land, for example in summer morning 1 of 1935. This is because he did not see modern art and agriculture as a contradiction, but noticed that he could make special statements about the obvious with his new expression.

At that time he often used the standing and hanging isosceles triangle as a compositional scheme, the so-called “Villard's canon of division”, which he had got to know alongside other canons of division, for example Albrecht Dürer's (1471–1528) with Hermann Groeber at the Munich Academy . It goes back to Villard de Honnecourt (around 1200 – after 1253). Urech-Seon was not alone with his experiments. His classmate in Munich, the German artist Walter Dexel (1890–1973) often worked with this concept at the time.

It struck him that Urech-Seon contradicted his colleagues in the Aargauer GSMBA with his new direction . For example, his painter colleague Paul Eichenberger (1891–1984) wrote: "I cannot quite understand why you always ride around on this non-local and racial Pegasus ." or it was said, "if you lived among colleagues who did not hold back with honest criticism, you would ... certainly ... create more important ... and more contemporary works." The word "contemporary" in particular must have electrified Urech-Seon, as he firmly believed that true art stood above the times.

Surrealist form-finding (1940-1946 / 1948)

The official rejection did not prevent him from consistently pursuing his path. This led via symbolist works such as Waldeszauber (1938) and 1940, Der Anschluss (1939), Herr hilf (1942) or Der Kampf (around 1942) to pure compositions, that is, away from the abstraction of that which actually exists in the environment Concretization of thoughts. The retired into solitude now opposed the external lack of events with a worldview in which internal images and visions dominated more and more. The geometric design language became his vocabulary for his metaphysical content. In the process, a work that he had created in 1946 as a division of space was suddenly recognized in three dimensions and renamed the ski area.

Free composition (1945 / 1948–1959)

The late 1940s are years of some recognition. After an exhibition in 1947 at the Zurich gallery of Eaux-Vives , he was accepted by the Zurich Concrete, with whom he was also allowed to exhibit in 1947 at the Kunstverein St. Gallen and at the Kunsthaus Zurich and in 1957 at the Helmhaus Zurich. Camille Graeser (1892–1980), Leo Leuppi (1893–1972), Richard Paul Lohse (1902–1988) and Max Bill (1908–1994) were all a good generation younger than the then 70-year-old Urech-Seon. Differences remained despite mutual respect. On the one hand: the Zurich Concretists are constructive systematists, Urech remains in a certain sense the hymn and poet, so ultimately not a concrete man.

Even in his later work, Urech-Seon never used masking tape, a stencil or even a spray gun. All lines are drawn by hand, the surfaces are leveled with a spatula and therefore appear vibrantly transparent. Urech-Seon himself: “The geometric shapes are taken from life. In life everything is rounded off, there are no very sharp corners or edges; the high aristocrat must also deal with the worker, either through civil servants or other middle-class people. "

Urech-Seon found his typical colors of the mature work at the end of the 1940s: cadmium yellow , dark ultramarine blue , cadmium red , a purple. Its green is incomparable: it was bought under the name “Vert Eméraude” - but Urech-Seon used it in a mixture that is now called “Urech green” in Aargau art.

Some of the pictures from this phase of work still have associative titles such as Chinese , Die Wendung or Die Masche , but mostly simply composition , supplemented with a number or a letter to identify them.

And yet in Urech-Seon's pictures associative memories of figurative objects emerge again and again, up to his last picture from 1959, in which a head can be seen with a closed eye, which he called Step into Modern Times and dated 1989.

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

  • 1946: Galerie des Eaux-Vives, Zurich
  • 1960: Gym, Seon
  • 1976: Aargauer Kunsthaus , Aarau
  • 1979: Heimatmuseum, Seon
  • 1979: Walcheturm Gallery, Zurich
  • 1983: Trudelhaus Gallery, Baden
  • 1989: Galerie am Rindermarkt 26, Zurich
  • 1989: Gallery 6, Aarau
  • 1991: Aargauer Kunsthaus , Aarau
  • 2006: Galerie Rigassi, Bern
  • 2006: Art '06, Zurich
  • 2009: Aquatinta Gallery, Lenzburg
  • 2017/2018: Bromer Kunst , Roggwil

Group exhibitions

  • 1920–1957: Regular participation in the annual exhibitions of Aargau artists
  • 1947: "Allianz", Kunsthaus Zurich
  • 1948/1950: Salons des Réalitées Nouvelles, Paris
  • 1954: "Allianz", Helmhaus Zurich
  • 1974: «Aargauer Art at a Glance», Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau
  • 1981: «Thirties Switzerland. Constructive Art 1915–1945 », Kunstmuseum Winterthur

literature

  • Christian Herren, Daniel Gutscher (Ed.): Rudolf Urech-Seon (1876–1959) - “Step into the Modern Era”. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-85881-566-8 .
  • Stephan Kunz, Beat Wismer: Rudolf Urech-Seon (1876-1959). Exhibition catalog Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 1991.
  • Works from the 30s and 40s by Rudolf Urech-Seon. Exhibition catalog Galerie am Rindermarkt 26, Zurich. With contributions by Max Amsler, Annelise Zwetz and Emmi Gutscher. Zurich 1989.
  • Works from the 1950s by Rudolf Urech-Seon. Exhibition catalog Galerie 6, Aarau. With contributions by Max Amsler, Annelise Zwez and Emmi Gutscher. Aarau 1989.
  • Beat Wismer: Rudolf Urech-Seon. In: From Cuno Amiet to today, works of the 20th century. Collection catalog, volume 2. Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 1983, pp. 487–489.
  • Thirties Switzerland. Constructive art 1915–1945. Exhibition catalog Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur 1981, p. 36.
  • Daniel Gutscher: Rudolf Urech-Seon (1876-1959). In: Aargauer Almanach for 1975. Aarau 1974, Volume 1, pp. 184–192.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Annelise Zwez: Only the eye and the mind are decisive in art, not nature, but art is in the same […] In: Galerie am Rindermarkt, Gallery 6 (ed.): Works of the 50s by Rudolf Urech-Seon (1876-1959) . Aarau 1989, p. 3–9 ( urech-seon.ch [PDF; 5.6 MB ; retrieved on February 24, 2019] also in: Works from the 30s and 40s by Rudolf Urech-Seon , catalog Galerie am Rindermarkt 26, Zurich 1989).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Stephan Kunz: Rudolf Urech-Seon. An anti-hero of the modern age . In: Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (ed.): Rudolf Urech-Seon. 1876-1959 . Aarau 1991, p. 6–16 ( urech-seon.ch [PDF; 6.1 MB ; accessed on February 24, 2019]).
  3. ^ A b Walter Labhart: Groundbreaking, avant-garde painting by Urech-Seon. The new publication “Rudolf Urech-Seon (1876–1959); Entering the Modern Era »for the first time a comprehensive monograph is fair. In: azmedien.ch. January 17, 2018, accessed February 24, 2019 .
  4. ^ Note in sketchbook, estate of the artist.
  5. ^ Paul Eichenberger to Rudolf Urech-Seon, September 6, 1933. Estate of the artist.
  6. ^ Paul Eichenberger to Rudolf Urech-Seon, May 30, 1932. Estate of the artist.
  7. ^ Note in the margin of a drawing in a sketchbook, estate of the artist.
  8. ↑ Annelise Zwez: Rudolf Urech-Seon Gallery Aquatinta Lenzburg 2009 - He defied time and went his way. In: Aargauer Zeitung of May 14, 2009; on the author's website, accessed February 5, 2019.
  9. ↑ Rudolf Urech-Seon on the Bromer Kunst website, accessed on February 5, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Urech-Seon, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Urech, Rudolf (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Seon AG
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1959
Place of death Seon AG