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Artists from A-Z Ernst Morgenthaler

1887–1962
  • Notre-Dame de Paris im Mondschein (1932)
    Notre-Dame de Paris im Mondschein
    Artist: Ernst Morgenthaler Dating: 1932 Type: Painting Material: Oil on canvas Measures: 68 x 88 cm Acces / purchase date: 1962 Inventory number: 0285
Ernst Morgenthaler was one of the most important figurative painters in Switzerland from the 1920s to the 1960s. The importance of his painting was seen in its emphasis on subjective experience and its differentiated colourfulness. Furthermore, Morgenthaler's romantic tendency was contrasted with the pathos and monumentality of Ferdinand Hodler and his successors. He stood out as a painter who interpreted his own sphere of life and his native landscape poetically, but also portrayed them in an enigmatic and visionary way. Landscapes at any time of the year, portraits, family scenes, night pictures, still lifes - these are his repeatedly varied themes; he concentrated on simple motifs from his own sphere of life and could basically only paint what he had seen and experienced himself or what he was moved by. "Art does not come from ability", he corrected the common expression, "it is there from the beginning and is called emotion".

An important step in his development was the decision to move to Paris with his family in 1928, where he devoted himself intensively to painting and deepening his knowledge. With carefully chosen colour tones, he even more consciously sought suggestive effects. In the organisation of the objects in the room, the painter's personal impression of the harmony of colours and forms, his mood and feeling are communicated. The painterly element now stands out more strongly than the draughtsmanly element, figurative elements are sometimes only hinted at, individual parts of the picture become almost abstract (The Garden Gate in Meudon, 1929).

In the landscapes of the 1930s and 1940s he achieved a differentiated handling of colour, which goes back to the influence of Cuno Amiet and his involvement with French painting culture (Rauhreif, 1939). The lightness and certainty of his composition seduced him into a routinely smooth style of painting, which he nevertheless varied confidently with a virtuoso handwriting. His self-doubt repeatedly led to works of profound expression and fragility. In his late work, which began around 1954, a change can be discerned that affects both motif and design: details recede, modelling often disappears altogether, the representation detaches itself from nature in terms of form and colour; with a free painterly structure, a fixed formal pictorial structure is striven for (In Maloja, 1955). Of the paintings of recent years, the seascapes from Sardinia, seen simply and on a large scale, stand out. They are of delicate, sometimes intense colour and reduced to the most necessary surfaces and lines; they are quiet pictures of poetic mood, concentrated on the essential.

Steffan Biffiger: «Ernst Morgenthaler». In: SIKART Lexikon zur Kunst in der Schweiz, 2015 (erstmals publiziert 1998).