Franz Gertsch (1930–2022)

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'Around the house, butterbur sometimes begins to sprout as early as January. An insignificant weed. But then, one morning in May, its leaves are dusted with golden-ochre sand from the Sahara. That was when I discovered the beauty of butterbur and chose it as the protagonist of my woodcuts.'

In 2014, Gertsch translated the image of the butterbur dusted with Saharan sand into a painting for the first time. That painting is the one you see here. He explained his fascination with this plant as follows:

'Can butterbur, grasses, stones and water become the objects of my longing? Perhaps in the sense that I see them as mysterious beings.'

'The butterbur are my friends.'

Gertsch moved ever closer to the plant, exploring its innermost structure. This is also evident in another work – Grosse Pestwurz (Large Butterbur) from 2018, which you will see at the end of the tour in the main hall. This painting offers a remarkable glimpse into nature’s microcosm. And yet it could just as easily be something entirely different: a green continent, with its veins, peaks and valleys, seen from outer space. That was precisely Gertsch’s intention – to reveal the whole cosmos within the smallest of things.

'It’s almost a kind of – what do you call it? – déformation professionnelle; as a painter, I actually paint everything I look at. Looking also becomes a search for the possibility of presenting it as a picture, as a fragment of the cosmos.'

Finally, he took the idea one step further. In 2021, he painted Blaue Pestwurz (Blue Butterbur), one of his very last works. You have already seen it in the Blue Room. Gertsch peered ever more deeply into nature, remaining until the very end in search of what, to borrow Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous words in his play Faust, 'holds the world together at its core'. For the final stop on our audio tour, please make your way to the seascape hanging opposite the Guadeloupe triptych.