MUSEUM RITTER - Camille Graeser

The artist has turned and rotated a number of square surfaces on a lengthways canvas, fitting them into the squares below which, in varying sizes and with their rims partly accentuated by colour, have been piled up in layers. Using contrasting complementary colours, he alters the effects created by the squares singularly and together: green and red surfaces encounter one another, while white squares stand out or recede into the picture space. In this way Graeser places the strict form of the square in a dynamic relationship that permits the eye no rest, and keeps the viewer’s perceptions in constant motion.
This work is based on a totally rational logic. But it is a logic that aims at a no less fundamentally irrational effect – especially through the ingenious interaction between colour and form. Camille Graeser’s work “Abgewandelte Quadrate” [Modified Squares] was done in 1943, at a time when Graeser had resumed his artistic practice after two years in the auxiliary military services. A central concern of his during this phase was with his experiments using a vocabulary of geometrical forms, which dispensed with “every connection to visible reality”.


1892		born in Carouge (CH)
1898		On the death of the father his family moves to Stuttgart, Germany
1911–15		Trains on the vocational course for furniture and interior design at the Kunstgewerbeschule Stuttgart
1917		Opens his own studio for interior design, commercial art and product design in Stuttgart
1918–19		Private pupil of Adolf Hölzel in Stuttgart
1933		Moves to Zurich
1937–38		First Concrete oils and wooden reliefs
1937		Member of the art group Allianz – an association of modern Swiss artists in Zurich
1975		Awarded the Art Prize of the City of Zurich
1980		died in Wald/Canton Zurich