Samuel Buri

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Samuel Buri (born September 27, 1935 in Täuffelen , Canton of Bern) is a Swiss painter.

Life

Samuel Buri was born on September 27, 1935 in Täuffelen, Canton Bern. In 1948 the family moved to Basel because his father, Fritz Buri , worked as a pastor in the St. Alban's Church and later in the Münster.

In 1959, Samuel Buri met his first wife, the French set and costume designer Christine Herscher. He moved to her in Paris at the end of 1959 and later to Givry in Burgundy. In 1962, 1963 and 1965 he had three children.

In the mid-1970s he was drawn to Habkern in the Bernese Oberland again and again , where from 1977 he converted an old farmhouse into a residential and studio house. In 1979 he moved from Givry to Paris .

With his second wife, the Basel art historian Anna Rapp, he moved to Zurich in 1981 and to Basel in 1983. Since then he has lived in Basel and Habkern . In 1982 and 1987 he had two daughters.

plant

Samuel Buri, born 1935, painter, glass mosaic, Vas-y, 1961-62. Gymnasium Wirtschaftsgymnasium, St. Jakob Strasse 115, Basel (1)
Glass mosaic, Vas-y, 1961–1962
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The art historian Katharina Katz writes:

The starting point for the work of Samuel Buri is on the one hand the French painting of the impressionists, especially Claude Monet's atmospheric pictures, the two-dimensional decorative tendency of the post-impressionists, e.g. Pierre Bonnards, and the work of Henri Matisse. On the other hand, the expressive expression in the paintings of the Basel red-blue artists as well as the tradition of Swiss landscape painting by Cuno Amiet, Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler and Giovanni Segantini have an impact. Buri combines these positions with modern elements to create a new painting. He analytically breaks down his impressions of nature in order to translate them in an abstract or representational manner into surfaces with increased color and ornamental rhythm.

Buri's work, which mainly includes canvas paintings, wall paintings, glass windows, mosaics, watercolors and lithographs , has no narrative program. Through the interplay of color and shape, it aims to challenge the eye and delight in the spirit of Matisse's “Joie de vivre”. Landscapes, trees, the studio, churches and cloisters, flower and fruit still lifes as well as portraits are the most important subjects. Central themes are nature and image illusion, the act of painting, the painter. Spectral colors, combinations of complementary color pairs, serial variations of color, juxtaposition of geometric and organic shapes and the tendency towards ornament are characteristic. The work in series, the combination of different style elements and motifs belonging to different times, areas and levels are typical features of Buri's work.

In the winter of 1952/53, Samuel Buri participated for the first time in the annual Christmas exhibition (forerunner of today's Regionale) in the Kunsthalle Basel . From 1953 to 1955 he attended the Basel trade school, painting class from Martin Christ, courses with Walter Bodmer , Theo Eble , Max Sulzbachner , Gustav Stett and Max Zulauf. In 1955 he assisted Hans Stocker with the execution of mosaics and in 1956 of glass windows.

Arnold Rüdlinger , director of the Kunsthalle Bern (1946–1955) and the Kunsthalle Basel (1955–1967), contributed with his enthusiasm for American Abstract Expressionism , European Tachism and Informel to move Buri away from his teacher's more traditional painting Christ solves. The encounter with Sam Francis in the mid-1950s was also significant. At the beginning of winter 1956 the first semi-abstract winter pictures were taken in Habkern, in summer 1956 in Greece abstract impressions of the sea. Around 1957 the brightly colored pictures with blotchy or gestural application of paint and decorative color gradients became increasingly abstract. From 1957 Buri received numerous commissions for art in architecture.

In Paris, the influence of the French painting tradition became important on the one hand, and the confrontation with international contemporary art on the other: from 1959 to 1961, Buri's abstract color visions acquired a lyrical, atmospheric quality. In 1961 he turned to geometric abstraction with emphasized diagonals, horizontals and verticals. The composition of the image with motifs from heraldry became stricter and more rhythmic. In 1962 he returned to representationalism under the influence of Anglo-Saxon Pop Art , which he developed into his own expression with floral motifs, depictions inspired by everyday domestic life and subjects from rural life in acrylic paint as well as various synthetic materials and stencil technology. Templates for the stencils with which he created the pictures are printed products such as product catalogs, newspapers or postcards.

The end of the Pop Art phase in Buri's work coincided with the political unrest in France in the late 1960s. In 1968 and in the following years he took part in artistic activities and installations, for example in the 1969 exhibition For Changes of All Kinds at the Kunsthalle Basel. The move with his family to Givry in 1971 ushered in a new phase of his work. While still in Paris, a visit to the Salon de l'agriculture had inspired him to make life-size sculptures of cows from plaster of paris or polyester, which he then painted with colored patterns. Sculptural works on the subjects of painting and nature followed. In the early 1970s, Buri in Burgundy gradually began to paint more in nature and in front of the motif. The result was more naturalistic works with a distinctly painterly character, depictions of nature, in which the experiences from abstract painting and Pop Art flow.

Works (selection)

  • 1958: Summer (triptych), Kunstmuseum Basel collection
  • 1964: Parasol, Restaurant Kunsthalle Basel
  • 1967: Greti, Kunstmuseum Basel collection
  • 1975: Monet 4, genre Buri, Kunstmuseum Basel collection
  • 1978: Gänseliesel, wall painting, house for the crane dispute, Rheinsprung , Basel
  • 1979–1982: drafts for the choir windows of the Basel Minster (unexecuted); Sample disk in the Kunstmuseum Basel collection
  • 1985: Mural in the Zunfthaus Zum Schlüssel, Basel (Basel Heimatschutz Award 1986).
  • 1997: 20 francs special coin on the occasion of the 200th birthday of the writer Jeremias Gotthelf .
  • 2007: Illumination of the new Zurich Bible

Exhibitions (selection)

Awards and grants (selection)

  • 1955: Kiefer-Hablitzel scholarship
  • 1965: GSMBA anniversary award for painting
  • 1967: Prix Arnys and Premio di Lissone
  • 1985: Mural in the Zunfthaus Zum Schlüssel, Basel (Basel Heimatschutz Award 1986).

literature

  • Katharina Katz: Samuel Buri. Monograph. Benteli, Bern 1995, ISBN 3-7165-0977-9 .
  • Suzanne Schwarz: Visit to Samuel Buri's studio . In: You. The Journal of Culture, No. 43, 1983.
  • Radio SRF 2 Kultur: The beauty of getting older - Samuel Buri: "My life's work is done". Radio SRF 2 Kultur, January 2016.

Web links

Commons : Samuel Buri  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Katharina Katz: Buri, Samuel. In: Sikart (status: 2011), accessed on November 24, 2017.
  2. ^ Philipp Meier: At the intersection between art and advertising | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 1, 2013, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed April 22, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Video from 1979 from his studio in Givry, YouTube
  4. ↑ The colorful cows of the Champs-Elysées
  5. ↑ Ludmila Vachtova. Roswitha Haftmann . P. 105
personal data
SURNAME Buri, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Tauffelen