Franz Gertsch (1930–2022)
102 - Maria mit Kindern (Maria with Children), 1971
Dispersion on unprimed half-linen,
Museum Kurhaus Kleve, permanent loan from the Estate of Franz Gertsch
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These two monumental paintings offer a truly breathtaking visual experience. Measuring four by six metres each, they are the largest works Franz Gertsch ever made.
The painting Maria mit Kindern (Maria with Children) faces another work, Medici. Both were created for Gertsch’s first major solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in 1972. Its director, Jean-Christophe Ammann, invited Gertsch to create what he described as 'a delirium'. Gertsch later recalled:
'In early 1971, Maria and I visited the museum galleries where the exhibition was to be held. My first thought was: ‘Good heavens, how am I supposed to conjure up a delirium in just one year?’ I decided to tackle it with a small number of monumental works. (…) But to realise this vision, I needed an enormous studio. Luckily, I was able to rent a huge attic in the old Gassner brewery by the River Aare. And then I got to work.'
Both paintings are based on snapshots Gertsch took with his 35 mm Praktica camera. The photograph that served as the model for Maria with Children was taken during a family picnic on the Chasseral, in the Bernese Jura, in the summer of 1969.
Shortly beforehand, Gertsch had an experience on Monte Lema in Ticino that proved to be a turning point and became part of the story he told about himself as an artist.
'On that mountain, I said to myself: ‘Now I’ve got it.’ I was standing on the summit, thinking that the whole world lay before me. I could do anything. It wasn’t about me anymore. I was simply the instrument through which these paintings came into being. It was as though I had arrived from Mars and could simply see everything and paint it exactly as it was. I told myself: you must simply take your source material as it is.'
'Another important realisation for me was that photography allowed me to free myself from excessive emotion. In a sense, it relieved me of responsibility for the things I was depicting.'
From that moment on, the spell was broken. Gertsch had found his own visual language.
Working from a slide projected onto the canvas at the full size of the finished painting, he rendered everything with the same meticulous care: his wife Maria and the children, the checked picnic blanket, the blades of grass in the meadow. Nothing was given greater importance than anything else.
Shortly afterwards, Medici marked his international breakthrough.