August Suter working on a bust of his mother

August Suter (19 July 1887 – 28 November 1965) was one of the most prominent Swiss sculptors of European stature in the first half of the 20th century. His circle of friends included important literary figures like

Blaise Cendrars Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European mod ...

and

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

Life

August Suter was born at

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

, the son of Johannes Suter (1857–1907) a bookbinder from

Eptingen Eptingen is a municipality in the district of Waldenburg in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. History Eptingen is first mentioned in 1145 as ''Ebittingen''. Castle Ruins Around Eptingen The Burgruine Witwald, also called ''Wild-Ept ...

and Katharina Suter-Schaub (1859–1941). After an apprenticeship as a bookbinder with his father and courses in painting and drawing at the Basel Gewerbeschule (vocational school) he worked for local sculptor Carl Gutknecht (1878–1970), before he went to the

Académie Julian The Académie Julian () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number a ...

in Paris in 1910. But he soon became an independent artist there and formed lifelong friendships with the writer

and the English painter

Frank Budgen Frank Spencer Curtis Budgen (1 March 1882 – 26 April 1971) was an English painter, writer and socialist activist acquainted with the author James Joyce. Life Born in Crowhurst, Surrey, Budgen spent six years at sea before working in London ...

, who worked as a model for him. Cendrars was later to write a successful novel (''L'Or'') about Suter's grandfather, Johann August of gold rush fame.

Rodo Auguste de Niederhäusern, better known as Rodo (2 April 1863 – 21 May 1913) was a Swiss sculptor and medalist active in Switzerland and France. Rodo was born in Vevey, and in 1866 moved with his family to Geneva. He attended the École des ...

(Auguste de Niederhäusern) advised him to whole-heartedly turn to sculpture. A long-standing friend was the Swiss poet and translator Siegfried Lang. Shortly before the War he also became acquainted with the German writer and anarchist

Johannes Nohl Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John (name), John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, ''Ioannes (given name), Ioannes''), itself ...

. During the

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Suter worked in Basel and Zurich, where he, his brother Paul and Frank Budgen got to know the exiled Irish writer

. He married singer Helene Moser (1893–1965) in 1917 and had three sons. From 1921 to 1939 Suter lived in Paris again and befriended the sculptor

Charles Despiau Charles Despiau (November 4, 1874 – October 28, 1946) was a French sculptor. Early life Charles-Albert Despiau was born at Mont-de-Marsan, Landes and attended first the École des Arts Décoratifs and later the École nationale supérieure de ...

, whose studio lay next to his.

Gotthard Jedlicka Gotthard Jedlicka (6 May 1899 in Zurich — 9 November 1965 in Duisburg) was a Swiss art historian and writer. Biography Jedlicka studied art history in Zurich, Grenoble and Paris and became a teacher in a secondary school in Winterthur, canto ...

, "Der Bildhauer August Suter" in ''Das Werk'', Band 14, 1927, p. 160 After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he worked intermittently in Paris and Basel, where he died at the age of 79 just months after his wife.

Work

Suter's naturalistic work is dominated by male and female nudes, figure compositions, portrait busts and architectural sculpture. In 1925 Ludwig Marcuse called him “the most important sculptor of our time”. At first he was influenced by

Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...

and Bourdelle, but turned to Maillol's classicism in the fourth decade of his life. Art historian

points out an important difference to Rodin: "where Rodin seizes impetuously, he waits calmly, and everytime he imbeds the unique rhythm of a particular life into the specific rhythm of his composition".

wrote in his Memoir, ''Myselves when Young'': "He excelled in portraiture. His work in that field was sensitive, forthright and masculine, occasionally leaning towards the baroque, yet always saved by a sense of measure from falling into expressionist caricature. I have often thought when walking through the gallery of Roman portraits in the British Museum that the artists who made them were Suter's far-off forebears." Suters most famous sculpture is the memorial “Prometheus and the Soul” for the Swiss Nobel Prize poet

Carl Spitteler Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (24 April 1845 – 29 December 1924) was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919 "in special appreciation of his epic, ''Olympian Spring''". His work includes both pessimistic and hero ...

at Liestal near Basel, which he worked on from 1926 to 1931. An unburned clay sculpture of

did not survive World War II.August Suter, “Some Reminiscences of James Joyce”, ''James Joyce Quarterly'', Vol. 7, No. 3, Spring, 1970, p. 198. Suter's son Claude donated his father's artistic legacy to the Basel municipality of Eptingen where it is accessible on request (museum@eptingen.ch). The August-Suter-Museum is situated at the old schoolhouse Schulstraße 5, Eptingen. Suter Cendrars.jpg, Portrait bust (destroyed) of

(around 1911) Frutiger Ringgenberg.jpg, Karl Frutiger, farmer at Ringgenberg (1912) Ella Schwartz bust.jpg, Bronze bust of Ella Schwartz (1929) Fleiner Grave.jpg, Grave figure of (1867-1937) Budgen portraithead.jpg, Plaster head of English painter

(1882-1971) Büste Siegfried Lang.jpg, Clay head of Swiss writer (1887-1970)

Bibliography

* Beck, Harald, "James Joyce to August Suter – from writer to sculptor" in:
James Joyce Online Notes
', issue 9, 2015 * Birkhäuser, Kaspar, ed., ''Personenlexikon des Kantons Basel-Landschaft'', 1997, pp. 150–151 * Budgen, Frank, ''Myselves When Young'', London 1970 * Gantner-Schlee, Hildegard, Leaflet of the August-Suter-Museum at Eptingen * Jedlicka, Gotthard, "Der Bildhauer August Suter" in ''Das Werk'', Vol. 14, 1927 * Lang, Siegfried, "Der Bildhauer August Suter", in ''Baselbieter Heimatbuch'', 9, 1962, pp. 19–32 (includes a list of works)

References

External links

Suter and James Joyce

Statue at Uraniastraße, Zurich, which Frank Budgen posed for in 1916.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suter, August 1887 births 1965 deaths Artists from Basel-Stadt Modern sculptors 20th-century Swiss sculptors Académie Julian alumni 20th-century Swiss male artists