Karl Walser

Karl Walser ( born April 8, 1877 in Biel / Bienne, † September 28, 1943 in Bern ) was a Swiss painter, stage designer and illustrator.

Life and work

Karl Walser, the elder brother of the writer Robert Walser, began a (not completed ) Teaching as a draftsman, then as a decorative painter and eventually attended the School of Applied Arts in Strasbourg. From 1901 he worked as a book designer for the publisher Bruno Cassirer in Berlin. In 1902 he exhibited at the Berlin Secession and became friends with Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt.

From 1903 he worked as a set designer for the theater, inter alia, on Schiffbauerdamm with Max Reinhardt and began to illustrate books of his brother Robert. The two brothers lived at that time a common studio apartment in Berlin- Charlottenburg. In 1910, Karl Walser married from East Prussia derived Hedwig Agnes Czarnetzki. From 1911 he produced murals (eg in the villa Goose ( Königstein ) ) for Hugo Cassirer, Walther Rathenau, inter alia, to. From 1917 he lived in Switzerland again, where he worked on frescoes and etchings. In 1921 he went back to Berlin and was a board member of the Free Secession. In the following years he continued to work for the theater, before he finally returned to Switzerland in 1925. In subsequent years, he has participated in numerous exhibitions and verfertigte a number of murals, including for the office building in Zurich, the Grand Council Chamber in the Bernese City Hall and the municipal theater of Bern. From 1933 to 1937 he designed the dust jackets for the collected works of Thomas Mann S. Fischer Verlag. In autumn 1943 Karl Walser died of a heart condition.