Rediscovering a Swiss artist
Ernest Biéler. «Dreamt Reality»
Les Feuilles mortes (1899) and Les Sources (1900), the Kunstmuseum Bern owns two key works from Ernest Biéler’s (1863-1948) symbolist phase. This artist’s diverse oeuvre is well worth rediscovering. The large and comprehensive retrospective shows not only the artist’s early impressionist work together with his symbolist and realistic artworks, but also his paintings influenced by the Art Nouveau style - the zenith of Biéler's art.
Ernest Biéler was born in 1863 and grew up in Lausanne. He studied art in Paris. In 1892 he re-turned, impoverished, to Switzerland and set himself up in Geneva. Until 1917 he often stayed for periods in the French art capital and in the seclusion of Savièse (VS) before finally settling down in the Valais region, where he felt most at home, and in Rivaz on Lake Geneva.
Biéler carried out numerous public decoration commissions, as for example the ceiling painting in the Bern theater. In painting he developed a personal graphic style and concentrated on de-picting the world of Valais’ farmers and their families.
The show will exhibit paintings from all Biéler’s artistic phases. But it also incorporates his decorative work, presenting chairs he designed, his painted wall decorations, and a secular glass window.
With around 120 works of art, the exhibition provides the public with the opportunity of becoming acquainted with not only generally known but also obscure facets of the artist. It additionally includes privately owned artworks that will be shown to the public for the very first time.
The exhibition continues the Leading Swiss Artists Series in the Kunstmuseum Bern. It is a colla-borative project together with the Fondation Pierre Gianadda Martigny.
