Albert Schnyder (1898-1989), The Return Of The Foal, 1957 - Original Drawing

Albert SCHNYDER (1898-1989)
Swiss painter, designer and lithographer.
Jura landscaper and portraitist.
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The Return of the Foal, 1957
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24 x 19 cm [drawing]
43.5 x 36 cm [sheet]
55 x 46 cm [pass]
59 x 50 cm [frame]
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Pencil on bistre paper, laminated on strong paper
Baguette frame [original]
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Signed, titled and dated on the back by the artist
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Son of a mechanic of a locomotive and a mother from a peasant family in Emmenthal, Albert Schnyder undertook an apprenticeship as a lithographer in Bern at the time of the First World War. From 1918 to 1921, he took classes with Albrecht Mayer (drawing) and Arnold Fiechter (painting) at the Gewerbeschule in Basel. He is interested in old masters as well as modern artists, Paul Cézanne in particular. From 1922 to 1924, he stayed in several German cities, including Berlin and Munich, where he discovered the international avant-garde, the expressionism of the group Der Sturm and, in particular, the work of Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Klee, Georges Braque , Pablo Picasso and André Derain. He will destroy the work carried out at that time. He settled permanently in Delémont in the fall of 1924. He worked on portraits and the Jura landscape, and presented his works for the first time in 1927 at the Kunsthalle in Bern in a group exhibition. In 1936, he participated in a first significant exhibition, Schweizer Malerei und Plastik, in Zurich. In 1948, with René Auberjonois, he represented Switzerland at the 24th Venice Biennale. From then on, personal and collective exhibitions multiplied. We can note the retrospective organized at the Kunsthalle in Bern in 1959 on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, as well as in 2004 for the fifteenth anniversary of his death. In 1978, he was made an honorary citizen of the town of Delémont where, in 1979, the Paul Bovée gallery dedicated a major exhibition to him. Posthumously, the Canton of Jura awarded him the special prize for arts, letters and sciences. Albert Schnyder's work is in one piece and essentially takes as its themes the Jura landscape, the interior scene, the portrait of humble people, the still life. The style is clean, solidly structured, tense: an apparent simplicity which has earned the painter often imitated. His followers have forgotten the humanity, the emotional depth of the work, which is not based solely on observation. Schnyder intended to give an eternal value to his works and confided: “One will never be able to say of my paintings: ‘Here is Muriaux in September, between eight and nine in the morning.’ I seek the durable, the stable. I hate anything that leaks. I have to live the drama of my model, I have to express his fourth dimension.” An admirer of Cubism, he was inspired by its clarity of articulation without adhering to it. During his numerous travels, he was nourished by the painting of Piero della Francesca and Rembrandt: on the one hand the firmness, the synthetic vision, the clear and harmonious order, on the other the inner research , the emotional charge. We cannot distinguish periods in this work which has so well captured the tone, the harshness of the Jura country, without ever giving in to the picturesque. At most, we notice a transition from generally muted, dark tones, to a lightening of the palette around the 1950s, with the addition of warm luminosity. A painting rigorous in its form, tending towards the profound unity which, for Schnyder, governs nature. Institutional collections (selection): Delémont, Jura Museum of Art and History; Olten, Kunstmuseum Olten; Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen Schaffhausen; Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich. Jean-Pierre Girod: “Albert Schnyder”, in SIKART Dictionary of art in Switzerland, 2021 (first edition 1998).