Cuno AMIET ✿

Cuno Amiet (1868-1961) was a Swiss painter, illustrator, graphic artist and sculptor. Cuno Amiet is often called the “master of colour” and is seen as a pioneer of modernism in Swiss art; he ranks as one of the most versatile and significant artists of Switzerland.

Amiet was born in Solothurn and He attended the Kantonsschule Solothurn, where he graduated with the Matura in 1883. After studies with the painter Frank Buchser, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1886–88, where he befriended Giovanni Giacometti. In 1888–92, Giacometti and Amiet continued their studies in Paris, where Amiet studied at the Académie Julian under Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Tony Robert-Fleury and Gabriel Ferrier.

Amiet joined the Pont-Aven School in 1892, where he learned from Émile Bernard, Paul Sérusier, Roderic O'Conor and Armand Séguin. In Pont-Aven, he came to prefer the use of pure colour to tonal painting. In 1893, Amiet's lack of funds forced him to return to Switzerland, where he set up a studio in Hellsau.

A first exposition at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1894 was generally ill-received. In the 1890s, Amiet continued to collaborate with Giacometti and had only modest commercial success, until he was commissioned in 1898 to paint a portrait of Ferdinand Hodler, whose work would later exert a great influence on Amiet. His fortunes improved greatly in the 1900s, when he began participating in numerous European expositions and competitions, winning a silver medal in the Exposition Universelle for his work Richesse du soir (1899).

In the late 1920s and in the 1930s, Amiet executed numerous wall paintings. A 1931 fire in the Münchner Glaspalast destroyed 50 of his most significant works. Amiet was a member in the Swiss Federal Art Commission (1911–15 and 1931–32), a board member of the Gottfried Keller Foundation (1934–48) and of the Kunstmuseum Bern (1935–48). He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Berne in 1919.