Camille Graeser
Camille Louis Graeser ( born February 27, 1892 in Carouge, Geneva Canton, † February 21, 1980 in Wald ZH ) was a Swiss painter, interior designer, designers, graphic artists and representatives of the Zurich school of Concrete.
Life
Camille Graeser grew up in Stuttgart. He trained as a carpenter, and studied at the Royal School of Applied Arts furniture and interior design at Bernhard Pankok. In 1915 he worked as a furniture designer in Berlin and met Herwarth Walden from the gallery Der Sturm. In 1917 he opened his own studio in Stuttgart for interior design and commercial art and took painting lessons with Adolf Hölzel. He joined in 1918 the German Werkbund and participated in their exhibitions.
1933 Graeser fled to Zurich. There he married Emmy smoke that supported the unemployed financially. His artistic career began in 1937 with the accession to the artist group alliance. From the following year he took part in almost all the exhibitions of the alliance, from 1947 also abroad.
Work
As an artist, Graeser developed under the influence of his teacher Adolf Hölzel in 1920 an abstract expressionism. Later he went to a strict scale purism about who was influenced by his colleagues in Stuttgart Oskar Schlemmer and Willi Baumeister. As an interior designer in 1927, he was the leading representatives of the new style and new living in southern Germany.
In the circle of Zurich Concrete Graeser though was the oldest, the most humble artist. When he commented on his work, he did so in a poetic way. In 1943 he moved to a strictly structural design manner. In a 1944 published explanation of the terms abstract and concrete, he said, concrete is not only purity, law and order, it also means the visible -designed, picturesque sound, similar to the music.