Draft:René B

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René Bernasconi

René Bernasconi (born April 15th, 1910 in Strasbourg,  France; + August 4th, 1994 in Basel, Switzerland) was a  Swiss painter, graphic artist, and sculptor. His last citizenship was in the town of Paradiso, Canton of Ticino,  Switzerland.

List of Contents:

• His life
• His work
• Reception of his work
• Awards
• Selection of his works
• Literature
• References
• Web links

Life

René Bernasconi was born in Strasbourg, France, as the  son of Emilio Bernasconi, a dentist, and his wife Anna  (née Klein). He spent his childhood and school years in  Lugano, Switzerland. His parents gave him free rein to  develop his artistic interests. At the age of nine he won his  first painting competition.

By the age of 16, he had finished school and was enrolled  at the art academy in Torino, Italy. Between 1926 and 1930 he worked there, among other things, with  lithography, applied arts, oil-, watercolor-, and tempera  painting. He continued his studies in Paris at private  schools until 1934. In between, he regularly traveled to  Southern France, where he earned an income by creating  stage decorations and outfits for the casinos in Marseille,  Nice and Cannes, and by doing lithograph work in printing  companies.

When he returned to Switzerland during World War II, he  served in the military between 1943 and 1945. In 1946 he  moved to Basel. There, he was employed for several  years on a part time basis in a lithography company, which  left him time for his artistic endeavors. He visited the  Mediterranean countries, England, Scandinavia, as well as  North and South Africa as part of study tours. In Cannes,  France, he met the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, with  whom he enjoyed a lifelong friendship. The intellectual  exchange with Pablo Picasso allowed Bernasconi to refine  his artistic style further and to break away from his  previous image traditions.

As in his apprenticeship, he typically expressed himself  using different techniques. He dealt with stained glass,  mosaics, and reliefs for the Basel-City State Art  Foundation, and was commissioned for murals by private  parties.

Work

SIKART, the lexicon of the Swiss Institute for Art Research, lists five group exhibitions by Bernasconi in the  Kunsthalle Basel, and posthumously one each in the  Cantonal Art Gallery, the art gallery Giovanni Züst in  Rancate, Ticino, titled ‘Gruppo di famiglia in un interno. La  collezione Bellasi di Lugano. Lugano e il Ticino in dipinti,  stampe, antichi libri e carte geographiche’, and in the  Museo Civico Di Belle Arti in Lugano, titled ‘Il confronto  con al modernità, 1914 - 1953.’ (1) In 2000, there was an  exhibition together with works by Zobrist / Waeckerlin and  Claudia Müller in the Aargauer Kunsthaus. (2) In 2002  and 2006 he was honored in a solo exhibition in the Basel  gallery Demenga, simply titled ‘René Bernasconi’ and in  the Riehen gallery Lilian Andree titled ‘René Bernasconi  (1910 - 1994). Painting and Water Colors.’ (1)

In 1959 Bernasconi received a commission from the  Building Department of the Canton of Basel-City to create  four large concrete reliefs for the new school in  Engelgasse in the St. Alban district of Basel. At the  beginning of the 1990s he belonged to a group of artists -  together with Joseph Beuys, Francesco Clemente, and  Hieronymus Emil Bischoff - of whom larger groups of  works or individual works were presented as gifts to the  Basel Public Art Collection in the Kunstmuseum Basel. (4)  Furthermore, his works have a place, among others, in the  BEWE Collection, which focuses on the Red-Blue group,  (5) as well as in the collection ‘Swiss Art of the 20th  Century’ of the National Insurance Company (today  Helvetia Insurance Group). (6)

Reception

In his obituary, the regional newspaper “Basler Zeitung”  wrote that Bernasconi “with his noble abstractions  belonged to the regulars of the urban exhibition business.”  In addition, he had developed a visual language that knew  “violent expression as well as the restrained, most modern  gestures.” His late work was determined by “a  boisterousness that hardly reveals the eighty-year-old  author.” (7)

On the occasion of the exhibition “Einstrahlung -  Ausstrahlung III” in the gallery Demenga, the Riehen  newspaper cited Bernasconi and Mark Tobey as two  examples of “brilliant artists who were successful in their  home country” who came to Basel and settled there. (8)

Awards

For the lithography Tamburino della morte (1955) he  received the gold medal at the Biennale Reggio Emilia.

Works (Selection)

• Fanny, 1955, Basel-City State Art Foundation - Passeggiata a cavallo, 1965, Museo Caccia, Lugano - Sotto la pioggia, 1965, Private Collection
• Hommage à Giacometti, 1970, Private Collection
• Literature
• Aldo Patocchi: René Bernasconi, Edition Bianco e nero.  Artisti ticinesi del ‘900, La Toppa, Edizioni d’Arte, Lugano  1961.
• René Bernasconi, in: Für Uns. Die Schweizerische  Zeitschrift für die zweite Lebenshälfte, Nr. 11, May 1979. - Dorothea Christ, Aldo Patocchi, Vinicio Salati: Der Maler  René Bernasconi, Schwabe, Basel 1989.
• Laure Bohrer, Giorgio L. Bellardi: René Bernasconi 1910  - 1994: Sein Leben - sein Werk, Schwabe, Basel 2004. - José Warmund-Cordelier, Laure Iselin-Bohrer: Kleine  Reise durch das Oevre von René Bernasconi, Verlag  Johannes Petri, Basel 2013.

References

• Bernasconi, René - SIKART Lexikon zur Kunst in der  Schweiz. (http://www.sikart.ch/kuenstlerinnen.aspx? id=4002036) In: sikart.ch. Retrieved on July 29, 2019.
• Zobrist/Waeckerlin, Claudia Müller, René Bernasconi.  (https://www.artlog.net/de/exhibition/zobrist-waeckerlin claudia-mueller-rene-bernasconi) In: artlog.net.  Retrieved on August 12, 2019.
• René Bernasconi. (https://www.artlog.net/de/exhibition/ rene-bernasconi-0) In: artlog.net. Retrieved on  September 1, 2019.
• Kunstmuseum Basel (Publisher): Jahresberichte  (Annual Reports). Basel 1993, Page 72
• Selection 97 - Kunstschaffen der Region mit  Teilpräsentation der Sammlung BEWE. (https:// kunsthausbaselland.ch/ausstellungen/selection-97) In:  kunsthausbaselland.ch. Retrieved on July 29, 2019.
• Schweizer Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Sammlung  der National Versicherung - SIKART Lexikon zur Kunst in  der Schweiz. (http://www.sikart.ch/literatur.aspx? id=11312054) In: sikart.ch. Retrieved on July 29, 2019.
• mü: Zum Tod von René Bernasconi. In: Basler  Zeitung. August 19, 1994
• rz: Ausstellung: Einstrahlung-Ausstrahlung III bei  Demenga - Kunst in Basel und aus Basel. In: Riehener  Zeitung. September 6, 1996, page 8 (docplayer.org  (https://docplayer.org/116879511-nein-zum-regiokultursommer-eigentlich-haette-der-gemeinderat sich-letzten-dienstag-darueber-unterhalten.html)).