Rarely, you will be greeted by such a lively concert from a lot of colored paintings in the current exhibition to Camille Graeser in the Haus Konstruktiv . Variety and rhythm are what you get with this art full of corners and edges, which may extend close to the color circle of the influence of the Bauhaus master Johannes Itten’s not hide and does not want to.

exactly Itten sets – the Kunstmuseum Bern is presenting currently in a special show in his color circle, such as the primary mixed colors of Yellow, Red and Blue three secondary colors. This, in turn, are surrounded by a Ring of twelve color blends of the inner two circles of the existing tertiary colors. Exactly itten’s ideas were, how the colors should be set in relation to, in order to produce specific emotions.

strip of image Dislocations. Exhibition view from the house in a Constructive way. Photo: Stefan Altenburger © Camille-Graeser-Stiftung/2019, Pro Litteris, Zurich

Graeser, who belongs to the circle of the Zurich Concrete, to established which in honor of the Museum Haus Konstruktiv was, went with his images of Itten and beyond. He added the color circle with the non-colours Black and White and poured everything into different geometric shapes, where you can’t see enough, because you will get tired by regularity the eye, because of the break with the standard program.

square head

Wonderful, such as the 1892 in Carouge, Geneva-born artist who came from a from France refugee Huguenot family, and, in Stuttgart grew up, the squares tumbling leaves. Vera Hausdorff, the Curator of the Zurich-based Camille-Graeser-Stiftung, senses, in her clever exhibition curated the “to Be of a specific artist”. You can draw on the rich holdings of the Foundation, which she extended when she shows graeser’s art in the context of his Zurich colleagues, to works on loan from museums and private collections.

Camille Graeser, composition, 1937. © Camille-Graeser-Stiftung/2019, Pro Litteris, Zurich

in the first four pictures are the focus, in which Graeser exercising the self-named method of the dislocation, or relocation, by. There is, for example, the “Yellow-Black-volume 11:1” from the year 1961/77, in which an almost screen-filling yellow square in the bottom right of a tiny Quadrätchen falls out and in front of a black Background, as if it was hanging on a tiny thread.

Or the “translocation of two squares with complementary color pairs” (1968/70), the rates of a colorful sequence of Quad under a thick black bar represents, of which the purple down a bit is slipped, while a red tilts completely out of the series and only a corner with the frieze of colored squares is associated. These images seem to make the animal Seriously a math automated art in question and show, what an ironic lightness to the artist breaks the self-imposed rules.

Zurich as an exile

Graeser operating initially in Stuttgart, an office for interior architecture. The exhibition makes it clear that he had set in his designs, with models like Willy Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer apart. His modernism committed to furniture designs of gifts but always the Craft to the preference. As a trained carpenter, he also worked mainly with wood.

in 1933, he left because of the Nazis in Germany and came to Zürich. Due to the economic crisis he could not grasp here, however, as an interior designer the foot, and so he moved to the field of pure art. At stadelhoferstrasse 33, he moved in 1936 with Emmy Graeser smoke together in a residential Studio, in the surrealist experiments, gradually, a change to the constructive-concrete form of language took place.

In the Specific

The interior of the Zurich apartment signed Graeser himself, in which he was keen to ensure that both residents were given a private room. On a photograph we see Emmy Graeser-smoke on a bed with a cover with Zebra fur pattern. For self-Graeser planned in the second room, the ascetic: The bed in the men’s room had only a neck support.

Emmy Graeser-smoke Zebra skin loungers as well as photography from the year 1936/37. © Camille-Graeser-Stiftung

gradually prevailed in Switzerland from interior designers to painters to become Graeser with his art, and was joined to one of the main representatives of Zurich Concrete artists, whose pictures among other things, with those of Richard Paul Lohse, Max Bill and Verena loewensberg in two halls of the exhibition in a lively dialogue. The exhibition makes it clear that mathematical principles, such as that of the Progression and Degression, as well as geometric shapes such as square, rectangle, circle and Rhombus with all these artists play a Central role.

Created: 05.11.2019, 15:08 PM