André Ramseyer (1914-2007) - Zonder titel

This abstract sculpture by the renowned Swiss artist André Ramseyer (1914-2007) was purchased directly from the artist around 1970 and is characteristic of his style, which was heavily influenced by Henry Moore’s geometric abstraction. His work from this period focuses on the interaction between “full and empty,” with the circular hole in the sculpture a classic element of his vocabulary. Although many of his best-known works were cast in bronze, he also worked with stone varieties such as marble and alabaster. This particular piece appears to be made from a polished marble type. The sculpture is numbered 1/1 and bears his distinctive monogram. The dimensions are 28 cm long, 18 cm high, and 12 cm deep. The last three photos are of similar works from the same period.

Provenance
Artist’s Studio
Family of Vliet, Eindhoven (1971)

Important !!
The black solid base is NOT included due to its weight (>25 kg) unless the sculpture is picked up.

André Ramseyer
For André Ramseyer, sculpting was a true vocation: “I could do nothing else. I heeded an inner calling.” A vocation he tried to answer, not without pain: “You strive for a goal that recedes further the closer you get. The artist always falls short of what he would like to achieve. It is a source of suffering and at the same time a source of inspiration,” he told Dominique Bosshard at the age of 90 (in the Neuchâtel Express, January 31, 2004).

After studying with Léon Perrin (1886-1978) in La Chaux-de-Fonds and taking lessons at the Free Academies of Montmartre and Montparnasse in Paris, André Ramseyer treated the human body in a style that reflected his admiration for masters such as Rodin (1840-1917) and Maillol (1861-1944). The sculptor’s last figurative work is The Bather, looking out over the pool in the middle of the formal garden for the Hôtel DuPeyrou in Neuchâtel. This was a major milestone in his career: firstly because it was his first major official commission, and secondly because the work provoked controversy. André Ramseyer had to defend it against a group of opponents who clung to traditional art. It took five years before the work was unveiled, even though the original project by the sculptor dated from 1948.

After his time in Ossip Zadkine’s atelier (1890-1967), André Ramseyer gradually moved toward abstraction. The figures of the pairs he sculpted became simplified, refined forms, with empty spaces between their bodies. He explained his development as follows:

“It was in 1948, after The Bather at the Hôtel DuPeyrou, that I distanced myself from figurative art. After a year in Paris, I worked with the sculptor Ossip Zadkine. Under his influence I slowly developed into a form of freedom I had longed for.” Zadkine remained a figurative sculptor, but he allowed himself liberties with the human body, liberties that I adopted, as in Comfort, a sculpture now on the central square in Biel/Bienne; it is still the male and female body, but treated with great freedom.”¹

When Ramseyer ventured into abstraction, this art form was met with harsh judgment by the general public and even by many artists, such as Charles L’Eplattenier (1874–1946), Léon Perrin (1886–1978) and Paulo Röthlisberger (1892–1990). Ramseyer recalls that the latter, during a stay in Paris, was tempted to paint non-figuratively but gave it up. “Standing in front of a Marino Marini sculpture, he even said to me: ‘This is not for us.’” As for Léon Perrin, he judged his former pupil’s work now as “naïve, almost a vice!”²

Ramseyer’s fellow painters, such as Georges Froidevaux and Claude Loewer, who had also embraced abstract art, encountered the same incomprehension: the public in Neuchâtel simply did not look. Yet the Neuchâtel and Jura region made a spectacular entrance into modern art from the 1950s; sculptor André Ramseyer was one of the first to leave figurative art and gave his explorations of the circle a personal dimension, even though his work echoed Jean Arp or Henry Moore (whom he discovered in 1950 at the Bern Art Museum).

These formal explorations became increasingly innovative, risking further alienation of the sensitivities of the Neuchâtel public, which remained largely unreceptive to abstract art. Thus the Courrier de Genève wrote in 1960, after the unveiling of a sculpture on the façade of the Winterthur insurance building in Neuchâtel:

“For those who are interested—and we believe there are many of them—we want to point out that the bronze motif on the façade of the building, created by sculptor Ramseyer, bears the title Envol (Flight), which is good to know.”³ The sculptor wanted to integrate the work again into the architecture. Ramseyer explained this in the Feuille d’Avis de Neuchâtel:

“For this distinctly modern building the aim was to choose a simple motif, suitable for the outdoors, visible from afar and also for motorists, even for those who passed by quickly.” I chose a play of curves that, by contrast, emphasized the verticals and horizontals of the building. It was necessary to create a rising rhythm, obedient to the large upward movement of the facade and the long rectangular wall to be adorned. I want to emphasize that this work – which I called Flight – does not present anything. It is a sculptural element in which one should only see a play of forms and rhythms. Contemporary architecture calls for contemporary sculpture.”⁴

André Ramseyer created countless monumental works and engaged in a dynamic dialogue with architecture. He was always eager to integrate himself into the spirit of the place, playing with space, light, and the materials of those locations. According to Olivier Bauermeister, Ramseyer’s sculptures “gradually generate the space they need, in an uninterrupted motion of beginning and end.”5

André Ramseyer found an original path by multiplying variations on the circular form. For him, “the sphere was the most beautiful of all lines…” He also gave central emphasis to the “magic of the void” that inhabits and permeates the form. The polarities of the material and the immaterial thus come together. The artist liked to say that his works unfold in space, just as space penetrates them. He wanted them to “radiate from within.” In his 1979 monograph on the artist, Marcel Joray writes: “Forms born from the circle, symbol of the heavens, and from sections born from the square, symbol of the earth, multiply. The circle will become the central form of all Ramseyer sculptures, which strive to reach the sign, the spiritualized matter.” The sculptor repeats this point (in L’Express, January 31, 2004): “In a work of art there is matter, space, light, all the skill one can put into it. But there must be an additional, essential dimension, which I would call spiritual. The artwork emits its own vibrations.”

The Cantata of Gates of Day series (1988-1990) occupies a unique place within his oeuvre. Ramseyer repeatedly walked along the granite slabs his neighbor, a stonemason, had stored at his workshop. One day he felt compelled to carve architectural forms from these slabs and add subtle engravings as a tribute to the material itself. This approach unsettled many, and even the artist himself had difficulties with it.

André Ramseyer spoke about his work many times, in interviews and lectures. He also wrote the texts for the second part of the monograph published in 1994 by Éditions du Griffon.