Expressionist Landscape

We  have been unable to determine the name of the artist who created this beautiful expressionist scene of village houses and gardens.

Expressionist Landscape in Frame

There is a partial painting of an expressionist scene on the reverse and a tag from a framing store in Evolene in the Valais. The painter may have been a member of the Ecole de Saviese.

Approx. Canvas Dimensions: 40 X 33 cm

Jonas - By Olga Reiwald

Original Engraving by Swiss Artist Olga Reiwald

“JONAS”

Original aquatint engraving by the Swiss artist and book illustrator Olga Reiwald (1922-1988).

The biblical scene in which Jonas (Jonah)  is cast overboard into the deep, where he is miraculously saved when he spends three days in the belly of a giant fish.

Framed and ready to hang.

Annotated “Epreuve d’Artiste” (Artist’s Proof) and signed in pencil lower right.

Engraving size: 9 X 18 cm
Dimensions in Frame 30 X 40 cm

Genoveva

Leo Steck

(1883-1960)

“Genoveva”

This beautiful expressionist painting is entitled “Genoveva” after the lead character in Robert Schumann’s romantic German Opera.  It may depict the moment in the Oper at which the Virgin Mary appears.  Genoveva is based on the story of Genevieve of Brabant, a medieval legend set in the 8th century that is reputedly based on the 13th century life of Marie of Brabant, wife of Louis II, Duke of Bavaria.

Leo Steck was a well known Swiss expressionist artist.  Like many others working in the early 20th Century, he was also active in the applied arts, and stained glass, and  created the windows of the Heilig Kreuz church in Langnau im Emmental.

Dimensions: 55×38 cm – ( 21 5/8×15 in)

Autum Near Chexbres

Automne pres Chexbres by Francois Gos
(Autumn Near Chexbres)
Beautiful view out over Lake Geneva from the area around the village of Chexbres (Lavaux region between Lausanne and Vevey).

Oil on Board
Signed Francois Gos Upper Right

Condition:  Surface lightly soiled. Needs light professional restoration.

About Francois Gos

François-Marc-Eugène Gos, the son of Swiss landscape artist Albert Gos, was born in Geneva on November 11, 1880. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva, and worked and studied in both Paris and Munich during the early years of his career. His landscape paintings were widely exhibited throughout his career, and he also gained fame as a poster designer.

Francois Gos’ landscape paintings were widely exhibited throughout his career, and he also gained fame as an designer of posters. Like his father he was a passionate alpinist, and illustrated several books on the alps including La Flore Alpine Decorative and Zermatt et sa Vallee.

Francois Gos is listed in the Benezit and other major dictoniaries of art, and his works can be found in major Swiss museums.

Tag on the Reverse with Title, Presumably in the Hand of the Artist

(Zürich 1908-1964 Neuchâtel)

Expressionist Landscape in Blues and Greens with Trees and Houses – Springtime

Dimensions: 35 X 46 cm

The Swiss artist Lili Erzinger studied at La Chaumière in Paris, where she came into contact Fernand Léger and became close friends with the artist couple Jean Arp and Sophie Tauber-Arp.  During her time in Paris Erzinger also got to know and worked with other notable artists including André Lhote, Roger Bissiere and the Italian futurist Gino Severini.

Erzinger spent a number of years as an art instructor in the United States.  She became a member of the Swiss group of artists known as the Allianz.

Erzinger’s works can be found in the Museum of Art of Neuchatel among other collections.  A selection of her works from the Ebel collection are on display at the Musée des beaux-arts of Le Locle (near Neuchatel) until August 29, 2010.

Robert Schneider

(Switzerland, 20th Century)

Striking expressionist gouache. Farmhouse with a red roof.

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Leo Deck

Original Oil by Swiss Artist Leo Deck

The Swiss artist Leo Deck (1908 – 1997) worked in the region of central Switzerland around Bern.  He is known for his colorful landscapes in an expressionist style.

Deck studied at La Grande Chaumière in Paris, and after returning to his native Switzerland, continued to travel regularly to France and Italy.

Walter Krebs - French & Polish Soldiers cross into Switzerland

Walter Krebs
(March 17, 1900 Starrkirch (Solothurn) -
April 10, 1965 Bern)

Swiss Artist Walter Krebs is known for his large format biblical and reglious images and stark alpine landscapes.  He lived a solitary life, dedicated to his work, which has a powerful expressionist quality.

In this fascinating watercolor Krebs depicts a little known episode in WWII history.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, many Polish fighters fought alongside the French army.  But in June 1940, some 50,000 French and Polish troops were surrounded by the German army after the fall of Alsace Lorraine.  The French and  12,000 men of the 2nd Polish light-infantry crossed the border into neutral Switzerland, where they were interned.

At first the Poles were billetted in villages scattered across the Doubs region, but in the winter of 1940 they were moved to a  “mass detention” camp at Büren.  Their imprissonment lead to rising tensions, and then an open revolt in which a number of Polish soliders were wounded.  Eventually however, the Poles were allowed out of the camp to work.

A  note on the back of this work indicates that it depicts the crossing of the troops into Switzerland, which was personally witnessed by the artist.

Sources:  Military Refugees in Switzerland During WWII

VAVRO ORAVEC

(Born 1915, Tvrdošín, Slovakia)

Dancers

Mixed Media on Wood Board

Signed Lower Right

21 X 27 cm

Holocaust survivor Vavro Oravec did not become an artist until after the second world war. Born in the Slovakian town of Tvrdošín in 1915, Oravec studied medicine in Bratislava during the 1930s. After being prohibited from practicing medicine because he was Jewish, he worked with Jewish children who had been expelled from school. In 1944 he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, and then sent to the concentration camps at Gross Rosen and Blechhammer.

Oravec moved to Prague after the war, where he worked as a dentist and ban to experiment with painting. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 he emigrated to Bern, Switzerland.

The Jewish Museum In Prague organized an exhibition of his work in 2001 entitled “A Painter of Soul.”

Expressionist Countryside

Woodcut Posthumously Printed from the Original Woodcuts and Artist’s Paper Stock

Limited Edition of 70

Bears a stamp with the indication “Nachdruck 1974/1976 Vom Originalstock Exemplar Nr. 49/70″

Expressionist Hillside

Full Sheet including Margins: 63 X 74 cm

August Hermann Scherer

(February 8, 1893 Rümmingen, Germany – May 13, 1927, Basel Switzerland)

Scherer was a founding member of the “Rot-Blau” group that formed around Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos in the early 20th Century and is considered one of the leading sculptors of the expressionist movement.

Born into a poor farmer’s family, Scherer had to work for a living, and was apprenticed to a stone cutter in Germany at the age of 14. During WWI, Scherer lived in Basel, where he worked as an assistant to the Scultor Otto Roos. It was also during this time that he created the first of his own scultures. It was also in Basel that Scherer met Kirchner, who invited him to Davos, where he created the group Rot-Blau with his friends Albert Müller und Paul Camenisch.

More works by Scherer

Man And Woman at a Table

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