Woman in Half Profile – Early Drawing by Fritz Glarner
Fritz Glarner
(1899-1972)
Woman in Half Profile
Pencil on paper, c. 1920s
This finely observed drawing presents a young woman in half profile, her gaze turned delicately away from the viewer. Executed in soft, fluid pencil lines, the portrait reveals Glarner’s early skill in capturing psychological depth through minimal yet expressive detail. The loose, looping strokes that describe the sitter’s hair suggest a modernist sensitivity, while the confident contour of her features points to classical training. Likely created in the early 1920s, before Glarner fully transitioned to abstraction, the work reflects a period of exploration—where naturalistic draftsmanship coexisted with the early seeds of a formalist approach.
The sheet shows minor handling creases and traces of adhesive in the corners, consistent with its age and possible use as a study or exhibition drawing. An elegant and rare example of Glarner’s early figurative work, created before his immersion in the Concrete Art movement.
Dimensions: 24 x 31.5 cm
July 20, 1899, Zurich – September 18, 1972, Locarno
Fritz Glarner was a Swiss-born American artist best known as a pioneer of geometric abstraction and a key figure in the Concrete Art and Neo-Plasticist movements. Born in Zurich, Glarner spent much of his youth in Italy and France, where he received classical artistic training at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. His early career included figurative and representational work, as represented in our Village Antiques collection of his early drawings from the artist’s estate.
In 1923, Glarner moved to Paris, where he encountered the European avant-garde and developed close ties with artists such as Piet Mondrian. He became part of the Abstraction-Création group and began evolving toward a language of pure geometric forms and carefully balanced compositions. After relocating to New York in 1936, Glarner became a prominent member of the American Abstract Artists group and developed what he termed “Relational Painting”—a system of dynamic interplay between color, form, and spatial tension, expanding on Mondrian’s grid structure.
Though best known for his abstract compositions, early works reveal the foundations of his visual sensibility: clarity of line, structural focus, and a deep sensitivity to form. Glarner’s paintings are held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Kunsthaus Zürich. He also produced paintings for vast interior spaces such as the Dag Hammmarskjold Library at the United Nations and the lobby of the Time-Life building in New York.He spent his final years in Switzerland, where he died in Locarno in 1972.
