Sigismund Righini

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Self-portrait of Sigismund Righini, around 1899

Carlo Pietro Sigismund Righini (born January 4, 1870 in Stuttgart , died October 24, 1937 in Zurich ) was a Swiss painter and art politician.

biography

A decorative painter dynasty from Beride (municipality Bedigliora , Malcantone, Ticino) entstammend was born Sigismund Righini, the son of Francesco (1837 to 1914), decorative painter, builder and architect, and Katharina Steinbrecher (1838–1925) from Neustetten (Bavaria), born in Stuttgart.

He attended schools in Zurich. On the advice of the painter Ottilie von Roederstein (1859–1937), he immediately went to Paris to study at the Académie Colarossi after graduating from school (Matura Zurich 1888) . His first teacher was Jean-André Rixens (1846–1925). In the course of his studies, he met the art student Constance Macpherson (1871–1957) from England, whom he married in 1893.

Sigismund Righini: Self-Portrait, 1914 (inventory no. SR349)

After stays in Italy and Ticino, where the couple's daughter Katharina (1894–1973, later writer and wife of the Zurich painter Willy Fries , mother of the artist Hanny Fries ) was born, the young family moved to Zurich in 1897.

Free from financial worries, Righini developed a restless artistic activity. Painting trips took him in 1903 to Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg and in 1910 to England. He showed his works at national and international exhibitions. After 1920, Righini no longer went public with his art, but worked as an art politician.

Works

In 1898 he moved into the new studio built by his father on the upper Klosbachstrasse in Zurich. Still lifes , portraits, including self-portraits, and nudes were created in quick succession . Around 1904 he broke away from the ideals of the 19th century and became a partisan of modernism. Landscape motifs and everyday topics are central to this second creative phase, as is the examination of the effects of color and light.

Sigismund Righini often worked outdoors, influenced by his role models in Impressionism on the way around Zurich and on painter trips.

Sigismund Righini paints on Lake St. Moritz, 1904
Oranges and lemons
Folkestone Harbor , September 1, 1910; Oil on canvas on cardboard; 18 × 24 cm

Inspired by the movement of the "Fauves" with their strong, unbroken colors , the pictures of this creative period are filled with a colorful boldness and a spontaneous painting style, which also coincided with the art of his painter friends Giovanni Giacometti (1868–1933) and Cuno Amiet (1868– 1961) corresponds.

Belstone River Taw, Dartmoor, England

Many of his works are now privately owned and traded at auctions. The estate and part of his artistic work are kept at the Righini Fries Foundation . Further works can be found in the Foundation for Art, Culture and History Winterthur , in the Art Museum Solothurn , in the Kunsthaus Zürich and in the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI, Lugano).

During his lifetime he sent 15 exhibitions (from 1896 to 1920). His son-in-law Willy Fries posthumously organized ten exhibitions in Zurich from 1938 to 1965; There were another 27 exhibitions from 1966 to 2009 by his granddaughter Hanny Fries, including in Lugano 1989, Geneva 1996, Paris 2008 and Trubschachen 2009. In 2016 the Winterthur Museum Oskar Reinhart is showing his oil painting.

Public work and late work on paper

From 1904 Righini was a member and later honorary president of the Society of Swiss Painters, Sculptors and Architects (GSMBA). In 1921 he was elected central president. From 1915 he was a member of the Federal Art Commission and was its vice-president from 1923 until his death. His correspondence with Cuno Amiet, Max Buri, Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler and many others testifies to his solidarity with Swiss artists. At the Kunsthaus Zürich he was the driving force behind exhibitions of modern art. "In the first quarter of the 20th century there is hardly an artist association or an art committee in which he has not worked, often in a leading position."

In the time of crisis after the World War, he was commissioned by the Swiss Federal Council to monitor the importation of works of art into Switzerland (Federal Council resolution of July 15, 1921, entered into force on July 25). He held this position on a voluntary basis from 1921 to 1925 and from 1935 until his death in 1937.

In the 1920s he put his own painting on hold in favor of his commitment to Swiss art. He remained secretly active as an artist and made numerous colored pencil drawings on the way to his meetings and on business trips.

Night in Bellinzona

These drawings form his actual late work, which only became known to the public through posthumous exhibitions, each organized with the support of his son-in-law Willy Fries, and later his granddaughter Hanny Fries. A large part of his work is waiting to be opened up. This task is taken over by the Righini Fries Foundation in Zurich established by Sigismund Righini's granddaughter Hanny Fries and her husband Beno Blumenstein (1924–2010) .

swell

  • Righini family archive, managed by the Righini Fries Foundation ( hanny-fries.ch Zurich), [use on request].
  • Sigismund Righini: Letter Copier Books 1900–1937. 16 volumes. Preserved in the Kunsthaus Zürich, library (archive).

Texts by Righini

  • Max Buri in memory: Address by Sigismund Righini at the opening of the Buri exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1915. In: Rudolf Koella: Sigismund Righini, painter, draftsman, art politician. Offizin Verlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-907495-47-0 , pp. 133-135.
  • Funeral address for Ferdinand Hodler , given by Sigismund Righini on May 12, 1918 in Geneva. In: Rudolf Koella: Sigismund Righini, painter, draftsman, art politician. Offizin Verlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-907495-47-0 , pp. 131-132.
  • In memory of Böcklin. Address by Sigismund Righini, given in 1927 at the General Assembly of the GSMBA. In: Rudolf Koella: Sigismund Righini, painter, draftsman, art politician. Offizin Verlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-907495-47-0 , pp. 129-130.

Exhibition catalogs (selection)

  • Willy Fries: Sigismund Righini, 1870–1937. [Exhibition] Kunsthaus Zürich 1962. Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich 1962.
  • Sigismund Righini: Drawings 1922–1937. Art Museum, Solothurn 1992.
  • Eva Korazija: Hanny Fries and Sigismund Righini. Graphic collection of the ETH Zurich, Zurich 2000. (= sheets from the graphic collection of the ETH Zurich. 12).

literature

  • Hans Bernoulli : Sketches and pictures from England by architect H. Bernoulli and painter Sigismund Righini . In: The work . Association of Swiss Architects, Zurich 1920, p. 203–208 , here pp. 205–207 ( Text Archive - Internet Archive - three images: London, Trafalgar Square , Folkestone, The Beach and Exmouth ).
  • Berner Tagwacht. Vol. 29, No. 300, December 21, 1921, leading article page 1, signed “R.” (protest against the import control of art decreed by the Federal Council).
  • Righini, Sigismund . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 28 : Ramsden-Rosa . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1934, p. 354 .
  • Willy Fries: Sigismund Righini, 1870–1937. Zurich 1938 (= New Year's Gazette of the Zurich Art Society. 1939).
  • Righini, Sigismund . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 4 : Q-U . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1958, p. 69 .
  • 100 years of the Society of Swiss Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1865–1965 (GSMBA). Aarau 1965. (Text by Willy Fries, especially p. 35–37 about Sigismund Righini).
  • Daniel Widmer: “His eye was watchful everywhere”: Sigismund Righini and the Federal Council decision of July 15, 1921 on the restriction of the import of works of art. Licentiate thesis phil. Fac. I (Prof. Dr. Franz Zelger) University of Zurich, reproduced as a typescript. Männedorf 1991.
  • Peter Kraut: “Fair surveillance is ensured”: the Federal Art Commission and the import restrictions for works of art in the interwar period. Licentiate thesis phil.-hist. Fac. (Prof. Beatrix Mesmer) University of Bern, reproduced as a typescript. Bern 1991, esp. Pp. 39-48 and pp. 54-57.
  • Rudolf Koella: Sigismund Righini, painter, draftsman, art politician. Offizin Verlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-907495-47-0 .
  • Katharina Fries-Righini: How the daughter saw him: a memory picture. In: Rudolf Koella: Sigismund Righini, painter, draftsman, art politician. Offizin Verlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-907495-47-0 , pp. 19-20.
  • Andrea Lutz, David Schmidhauser: Sigismund Righini, under the spell of color. Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur 2016, ISBN 978-3-9524268-5-2 (exhibition booklet, 1, 58 pages, illustrated).
  • Sigismund Righini, Willy Fries, Hanny Fries: an artist dynasty in Zurich, 1870–2009. Edited by Sascha Renner on behalf of the Righini Fries Foundation; Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, 2018, 367 p., Ill. with over 200 images; ISBN 978-3-85881-601-6 .
  • Matthias Oberli: Sigismund Righini. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 4, 2012 , accessed April 1, 2020 .

Web links

Commons : Sigismund Righini  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the neighboring village of Curio there had been a training school for drawing, stucco and decorative painting since 1850
  2. ^ Museum website for the exhibition
  3. ↑ Lucia Angela Cavegn: Sigismund Righini in the Museum Oskar Reinhart - The dandy with a long beard and slouch hat. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . July 14, 2016 ( nzz.ch ).
  4. ↑ Andrea Lutz, David Schmidhauser: Sigismund Righini, under the spell of color. Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur 2016, ISBN 978-3-9524268-5-2 (exhibition booklet, 1, 58 pages, illustrated).
  5. ↑ 1937, obituary in Die Berner Woche in words and pictures
  6. ^ Rudolf Koella: Sigismund Righini, painter, draftsman, art politician. Offizin Verlag, Zurich 1993, p. 119.
  7. ^ Daniel Widmer: "His eye woke up everywhere": Sigismund Righini and the Federal Council resolution of July 15, 1921 on the restriction of the import of works of art. Licentiate thesis phil. Fac. I (Prof. Dr. Franz Zelger) University of Zurich, copied as a typescript; Männedorf 1991. / Peter Kraut: “Fair surveillance is ensured”: the Federal Art Commission and the import restrictions for works of art in the interwar period. Licentiate thesis phil.-hist. Fac. (Prof. Beatrix Mesmer) University of Bern, copied as a typescript; Bern 1991, esp. Pp. 39-48 and pp. 54-57.
  8. ↑ Atelier Righini Fries: 2019, The colored pencil drawings by Sigismund Righini. Retrieved July 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Righini, Sigismund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Righini, Carlo Pietro Sigismund (full name); Righini, Carlo Pietro Sigismundo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter and art politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1937
Place of death Zurich