Wilfrid Moser

Wilfrid Moser 1969

Wilfrid Moser (born June 10, 1914 in Zurich ; † December 19, 1997 there , entitled to live in Zurich) was a Swiss painter and sculptor .

Life

Wilfrid Moser grew up in Zurich- Enge as the son of the piano teacher Mathilde Moser and the sinologist Eugen Otto Moser, in a family home who maintained contact with artists ( Otto Meyer-Amden , Eugen Meister , Albert Pfister, Otto Baumberger ). In addition to the school in Zurich, he attended the first concert class for violin at the Conservatory. The family was often on study trips with the father ( Venice , Siena , Rome , Vienna , Dresden , Marburg ). The early impression of the complex architectural complex of the Siena Cathedral was a key experience for Moser and shaped his conception of space as an artist. During a vacation stay in Ticino (1921) he visited the studio of the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin , whom Moser encouraged to paint. In 1924 the Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich made a lasting impression.

After graduating from high school in 1931, he broke off studying mathematics in Lausanne . Moser met Sonja Preoprazhenskaya, a Russian dancer, with whom he traveled to Paris and Russia (1932), to Berlin (1933). In 1932 Moser visited James Ensor in his studio in Ostend. The image of Christ entering Brussels left a lasting impression. In 1933 he visited Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos. He traveled to Morocco with Nicolas de Staël . In 1936 Moser defended the front of Malaga against the fascists and was wounded near Guadalajara. In 1939 he had his first studio in Paris, on Rue de Vaugirard . In 1940 he returned to Switzerland and was called up for military service (marching orders). In 1941 he married Jeanne Gysi. Ronco sopra Ascona became the residence where Moser built his studio house. Niklaus Manuel was born in 1942 (who died shortly after birth), and in 1944 his son Gabriel.

Carrara, 1954.

Immediately after the war he lived in Paris, where he had contacts with Serge Poliakoff and Wols . The figurative early work emerged, small-format oil paintings on cardboard and pastels with motifs from Paris in the post-war period. In 1946/47 he had short study stays in the studios of André Lhote and Fernand Léger . In 1947 he traveled to Siena and visited James Ensor again . Wols' pictures opened up new painterly solutions. 1950–1951 influenced him by Cubism and Paul Klee . At the beginning of the 1950s he switched to gestural abstraction and made friends with the art critics Roger Van Gindestael and Charles Estienne, the author of the "Manifesto of Tachism". 1956 was the divorce from Jeanne Gysi. In 1958 he married Eva Rosa Puig. In 1959, the construction of the «Casa Selva» studio house in Ronco. Moser stayed mainly in Paris, in the summer he was in Ticino. 1960 first assemblages with painted wood. Image cycles on the subjects of the butcher's shop ( Eurylochos series ) and the “open houses” ( Concierge ). 1961 Sculpure grise , Moser's first sculpture. An extensive cycle of works on the Métro (1961–1965). Large-format woodblock prints (1963–1967), including the artist's book L'heure du goémon with a text by Charles Estienne. 1964–1972 he became a member of the Federal Art Commission . From 1968 to 1975 sculpture was at the center of his work. Together with his wife Eva, he executed some of the models as large-scale, accessible, colored sculptures, as commissioned works in France and Switzerland.

In 1969 he created the series of stained glass windows for the church of Réclère , Canton Jura. 1971–1978 he became the central president of the GSMBA Switzerland (Society of Swiss Painters, Sculptors and Architects). In 1971 he met the art historian Tina Grütter. Both were involved in cultural politics. A solid life relationship developed. In 1974/75 Moser returned to figurative painting and made frequent visits to Carrara and the Ticino quarries between Faido and Biasca. The numerous trips over the Gotthard Pass inspired Moser to create rock pictures. In 1983/84, while hiking in Val Scarl , Engadin, he came across a boulder marked with the hiking trail sign (white-red-white), Moser's painterly signature, so to speak, which marked the beginning of the gestural painting of his late work. Confrontation with Delacroix, van Gogh and Tiepolo. 1990 Numerous trips to the cultural sites of Europe and the works of art that have impressed him since childhood and influenced his art: u. a. Otterlo (van Gogh), London (Turner, Blake, Gainsborough), Vienna (Tiergarten, Schönbrunn Palace), Marrakech and Mogador in Morocco, especially Venice, the city of light with its numerous marble buildings, the monuments and the works of Tiepolo . Photos and sketches of the neo-baroque bridge Pont Alexandre , a symbol of Paris, led to the late cycle of pictures and etchings Pont Alexandre (1992–1997). On December 19, 1997, Wilfrid Moser died of a stroke in Zurich.

He found his final resting place in the Manegg cemetery in Zurich

plant

1934 - 1948 Poetic figuration: the motif as a formula for existence

Moser's artistic language was expressionism . Early formative experiences - u. a. the van Gogh exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1924 - showed him the way. With the woodcut series Plurima Mortis Imago (Dance of Death Stalingrad) , 1942, a first important cycle of images was created in the formal tradition of expressionist woodcut and folk art. Moser was reacting to the Second World War. In post-war Paris he found his motifs in the street views , butchers' shops ( Bladinaux ), the zoo ( Jardin des Plantes ) and with the image type of "open houses" and the metro , existential formulas for the homeless, driven people of the big city emerge. In terms of style, Moser was based on the Expressionism of Georges Rouault and Maurice Utrillo . James Ensor is the reference for the representation of the crowd pushing through the underground of the Métro ( Métro Ensor ).

From the outset, the temporal and everyday of Moser's motifs is suspended in the timelessness of mythological themes, the metro becomes the underworld.

1949 - 1960 Gestural abstraction, tachism

In the 1950s, Moser developed gestural abstraction from the orthogonal grids of the “open houses” and the bars of the animal cages in the Jardin des Plantes . He was considered a leading exponent of tachism, an avant-garde tendency within the Deuxième Ecole de Paris. The spot of color, the "tache" - the impasto colored stripes applied with a spatula - is the basic pictorial unit of the composition. This gestural abstraction is also rooted in Moser's realism of the 1940s, which is characterized by an existential concern. The term “existential Informel” (Matthias Frehner) does justice to Moser's artistic approach. The titles of the abstract compositions refer to the main themes in Moser's work: Carrara , the place where the creative process materializes, Venice, the city of light ( San Giorgio, Giudecca ), landscape fragments, as historical and personal memory carriers ( Aea, Taiga, Mojacar ), allusions to literature (Homer's Odyssey with Eurylochus ).

1960 - 1967 Expressionism: Themes of the Big City

From the end of the 1950s, Moser's painting became more expressive, the content more dramatic and interspersed with figurative elements. The collage became a stylistic medium. Guido Magnaguagno spoke of the creative phase 1961–1966 as the “wild” years of Moser. With the Concierge , Moser took up the motif of the “open houses” again and in the Eurylochos series the butchers of the 1940s found a new formulation with motifs references to the slaughtered animal bodies of Rembrandt and Chaim Soutine .

In the extensive cycle of Métro pictures (1961–1965), the urban lifestyle found a painterly equivalent. With this “Paysage de Métro”, Moser expanded the iconography of the 20th century with a new type of image (Tina Grütter).

"The Blue Fountain", Zurich Oerlikon

1961 - 1987 assemblages, colored plastic sculptures that can be walked on

Starting with assemblages of painted and collaged wooden boards, which had been created since 1961, Moser dealt with three-dimensional space in real terms in the second half of the 1960s. From 1966 he worked on the colored, red-white or blue-white-striped plastic sculptures made of epoxy synthetic resin, referred to by Moser as "walk-in pictures", which became his trademark. The first large-scale sculpture was A Midsummer Night's Dream in Soho , 1969/70 (Kunsthaus Zürich). This was followed by other large-scale sculptures for public spaces in France and Switzerland ( The Blue Fountain in Zurich Oerlikon, 1975). With a fantastic formulation and expressive colors, the artist took up the subject of plastic sculpture again in the mid-1980s ( Leporello , 1986–1987, Kunsthaus Zürich).

1975 - 1985 Space-expressive figuration: rocks and undergrowth

The rock pictures that Moser exhibited for the first time in 1977 marked the shocking change to a new era. The gray-toned representational painting of quarries and scree slopes was diametrically opposed to the turbulent, colorful urban world. The artistic appropriation of space is the leitmotif in Moser's work. With the rock landscapes he found new solutions for the design of expressive space on the picture surface. The marble quarries of Carrara and the granite quarries in Ticino became end-time landscapes ( La clé de l'abîme ). The representations of the undergrowth are also an appropriation of space through the drawing. This accompanies all creative epochs and becomes the subject of Moser's work. The mesh of lines in the colored drawing creates spatial perspectives that condense into a spatial labyrinth.

1986 - 1997 resumption of gestural painting, Fantastic Figuration, Pont Alexandre

In his late work, drawing and painting are combined in long, three-lane strokes of the spatula to form dynamic, rhythmic processes. You can also recognize the violinist Moser in them. Groups of figures form into parades and manifestations, the colors and ecstatic movement of which lead to an atmosphere of grotesque serenity.

The monument, inspired by the neo-baroque Parisian bridge Pont Alexandre III, is the center and climax of Moser's last work cycle. In front of a night landscape, the artist staged the architecture and statues in paintings, etchings and large-format pastels to create a fantastic theater: a festively celebrated vanitas.

In his early work, Moser developed pictorial motifs that retained their relevance for all of his artistic work. Resumptions and new formulations characterized the various phases of the work, while Moser explored expressionism between figuration and abstraction without giving up the thematic commitment. His pictures were about being affected by the world, about the human condition .

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1949: Kunsthaus Zurich: Young Zurich artists
• 1953: Premier Salon d'Octobre, Paris
• 1953: Kunsthaus Zürich: Painting in Paris - Today
• 1957: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Neuchâtel: La peinture abstraite en Suisse; then Kunstmuseum Winterthur (1958) and Kongresshalle Berlin (1958): Non-representational painting in Switzerland.
• 1958: 29th Venice Biennale: Moser represents Switzerland
• 1959: 5th Sao Paulo Biennial: Art et Nature
• 1959: Kunsthalle Bern: 4 painters. Tapiès, Alechinsky, Messagier, Moser
• 1963: 7th Sao Paulo Biennale: Moser represents Switzerland with Rolf Iseli and Walter Linck
• 1964: Kunstmuseum Luzern: first retrospective
• 1970: Kunsthaus Zürich: retrospective, in the center are sculptures and reliefs
• 1971: Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur: overview of works (exhibition with Franz Fedier)
• 1978: Kunsthaus Zürich: start of tachism in Switzerland
• 1979: Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen: retrospective with 117 works (oil paintings, drawings and sculptures)
• 1980: 40th Venice Biennale: Moser represents Switzerland with Peter Stein and Oscar Wiggli
• 1986: Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History, All Saints Museum in Schaffhausen: construction and gesture. Swiss art of the 50s
• 1993: Kunsthaus Zürich: retrospective
• 1997: Kunsthaus Zürich: Wilfrid Moser's old age
• 2009: Kunstmuseum Bern: Wilfrid Moser Wegzeichen, works 1934–1997

Honors / awards

• 1984: Honorary gift from the Canton of Zurich
• 1985: Award "Chevalier des Arts et Lettres" from the French Republic
• 1989: Art Prize of the City of Zurich
• 1993: “Officier des Arts et Lettres” award from the French Republic

literature

• Felix Andreas Baumann : Wilfrid Moser . Frauenfeld 1979.
• Daniel Abadie: Moser , in: Art 10'79, exhib.-cat. Jeanne Bucher Gallery, Paris 1979.
• Guido Magnaguagno, Ed .: Wilfrid Moser. A Swiss contribution to European post-war art . Texts by Daniel Abadie, Matthias Frehner, Tina Grütter u. a., exhib.-cat. Kunsthaus Zürich, Bern and Zürich 1993. ISBN 3-7165-0899-3
• Felix Andreas Baumann: Pont Alexandre or the old age of Wilfrid Moser. Works 1993–1997 , Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-85881-104-1
• Matthias Frehner, Tina Grütter u. a .: Wilfrid Moser waymarks. Works 1934–1997 , Kunstmuseum Bern and Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, 2009, ISBN 978-3-85881-716-7

Lexicons

• Dictionnaire critique et documentaires des peintres, sculteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays par un groupe d'écrivains spécialistes français et étranger , ed. by E. Bénézit, Vol. 9, Paris 1999. P. 889.
• Biographical Lexicon of Swiss Art , text by Guido Magnaguagno, Vol. 2, ed. from the Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich 1998, pp. 747–748.
• L'Ecole de Paris, 1945-1965. Dictionnaire des peintres , ed. by Lydia Harambourg, Paris 1998, pp. 352-354.
• Lexicon of Contemporary Swiss Art , Stuttgart 1981, p. 251.
• Artist. Critical Lexicon of Contemporary Art , ZEIT Kunstverlag Munich, text by Maria Becker, issue 95, issue 17th, 3rd quarter 2011.

Movies

• Wilfried Bolliger and Peter F. Althaus, Pro Helvetia and Schweizer Fernsehen, 1970, 16 minutes.
• Adriano Kestenholz and Tina Grütter, Wilfrid Moser. Stairs - A CV , AlephFilm, 2006, 20 minutes.
• Peter Münger and Guido Magnaguagno, Wilfrid Moser , video film by the Künstler-Video association, Zurich 1993, 40 minutes, French version 30 minutes.
• Peter K. Wehrli, film about the Blue Fountain in Zurich-Oerlikon , Swiss television, 55 minutes, 1977.
• Peter K. Wehrli, Sculpture Dorflinde , March 3, 1977, 21 minutes.
• Peter K. Wehrli and Wilfried Bolliger, Atmosphère Paris , 1979, 9 minutes.

Web links

• Tina Grütter: Moser, Wilfrid. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Guido Magnaguagno: Moser, Wilfrid. In: Sikart
• Wilfrid Moser Foundation
• Wilfrid Moser on the website of artnet.de