Franz Gertsch (1930–2022)

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Bach im Mondschein (Creek in the Moonlight), created in 1956, is one of Franz Gertsch’s earliest paintings and already demonstrates his remarkable mastery. It depicts the Reichenbach stream at night and is painted entirely in black, white and shades of grey using the grisaille technique.

The rippling water, the stones, trees, leaves and grasses, and the plant prominently ‘portrayed’ in the foreground are all bathed in a mysterious, almost mystical light. Here, Gertsch had already discovered the motifs that would come to occupy him so intensely in his later work. Even the meditative stillness that characterises the large-scale paintings of nature of his later years is already anticipated here on a much smaller scale. Franz Gertsch recalled:

'My first impressions of the landscape had a lasting impact on me. I was born in a beautiful place, in Mörigen on Lake Biel. (…) Those early experiences of nature shaped me profoundly.'