Bernhard Schobinger is a Swiss contemporary artist jeweler.

Early life and education

Bernhard Schobinger attended the School of Applied Arts in Zurich for two years, followed by Goldsmith's apprenticeship between 1963 and 1967. In 1968, he opened a workshop-gallery in

Richterswil Richterswil (Swiss German: ''Richtischwiil'' ) is a municipality in the district of Horgen in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland. History Richterswil is first mentioned in 1265 as ''Richtliswile''. During the 17th Century, a series of peasan ...

and started to produce his own work. In the 80s he spent periods of time in London, New York and Berlin.

Career and work

Throughout his career as an art jeweler, Schobinger has blurred the lines between applied and fine arts. His esthetic echoes

Concrete art Concrete art was an art movement with a strong emphasis on geometrical abstraction. The term was first formulated by Theo van Doesburg and was then used by him in 1930 to define the difference between his vision of art and that of other abstract art ...

mainly under the influence of

Max Bill Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. Early life and education Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith ...

Punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

culture of the 70s, Italian arte povera and

Neo-Dada Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, a ...

. Often playing with contrasts, Schobinger's single pieces are made of material which varies greatly from recycled objects and pieces inherited from his mother to precious metals and gemstones. Broken glasses, scissors or rusty material are used in a provocative way, making jewelry a means for a narrative on material culture.

As the art historian Roger Fayet put it, "His works are based not on 'neither-nor' but rather on 'both... and', on juxtaposition and interpolation. What comes out of this is - despite all this use of rubbish - jewellery of extraordinary richness: rich in materials and forms, rich in qualities that are sensorily perceived and, most importantly, rich in meanings and wit".Roger Fayet, Florian Hufnagl (eds.), ''Bernhard Schobinger, Jewels Now!'', Arnoldsche, Stuttgart 2003, p. 8

Schobinger has been invited as a visiting lecturer in a number of Universities and Academies, including the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry in Tokyo, the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

. the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Haute Ecole d'Arts Appliqués in Geneva.

Awards

His work was rewarded with a number of awards. Most recently, in 2007, he received the Swiss Federal Design Award. Others awards: * 1971 Diamonds-International Award, New York * 1972 Deutscher Schmuck-und Edelsteinpreis * 1994 Werkbeitrag des Kantons und der Stadt Luzern * 1998 The Françoise van den Bosch Award

Museum collections

Aargauer Kunsthaus Aargauer Kunsthaus (English: ''Aargauer Art House'') a Swiss art museum founded in 1959, and located in Aarau. The museum collection includes Swiss art from the 18th-century to the present day; and ''Naturama'', a natural history collection. A ...

, Aarau, Switzerland *

Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass obje ...

, Corning, New York, USA *

Gemeentemuseum Den Haag The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is an art museum in The Hague in the Netherlands, founded in 1866 as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst. Later, until 1998, it was known as Haags Gemeentemuseum, and until the end of September 2019 as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. I ...

, Den Haag, The Netherlands *

Grassimuseum The Grassi Museum is a building complex in Leipzig, home to three museums: the Ethnography Museum, Musical Instruments Museum, and Applied Arts Museum. It is sometimes known as the "Museums in the Grassi", or as the "New" Grassi Museum (to di ...

, Leipzig, Germany * Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Palais du Louvre, Paris, France *

Museum of Design, Zürich The Museum of Design, Zürich (German: ''Museum für Gestaltung Zürich'') is a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture, and craft in Zurich, Switzerland. Overview The museum is part of the Department of Cultural An ...

Switzerland *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, United States *

Die Neue Sammlung Die Neue Sammlung is one of the leading design museums in the world, with the largest collection of industrial and product design. Founded in 1907 with the ideas of the German Werkbund, Die Neue Sammlung became an official state museum in 1925 ...

, The International Design Museum, Munich, Germany *

Rhode Island School of Design Museum The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877, and still shares multiple build ...

, Providence, Rhode Island, United States *

, London, UK *

Schweizerisches Landesmuseum The Swiss National Museum (german: Landesmuseum)—part of the ''Musée Suisse Group'', itself affiliated with the Federal Office of Culture, is located in the city of Zurich, Switzerland's largest city, next to the Hauptbahnhof. The museum bu ...

, Zürich, Switzerland *

Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

, Amsterdam, The Netherlands * The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, United States *

Landesmuseum Württemberg The Landesmuseum Württemberg (Württemberg State Museum) is the main historical museum of the Württemberg part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It emerged from the 16th-century “Kunstkammer” ( Cabinet of art and curiosities) of t ...

, Stuttgart, Germany *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London * Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln, Cologne, Germany *

Museum für Gestaltung A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these i ...

, Zurich, Switzerland *

National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

, Oslo, Norway *

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra, Australia

External links

Bernhard Schobinger website

Necklace 'Hiroshima mon amour' by Bernhard Schobinger at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

'Crowned Heads and Vajra' - Bracelet and Box by Bernhard Schobinger at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA

Bibliographical references

# Wilhelm Lindeman, ed. Gemstone/Art. Renaissance to the Present Day. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2016. () # Glenn Adamson, "Bernhard Schobinger: The Rings of Saturn", Arnoldische Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany 2013. () # Roger Fayet and others, "Bernhard Schobinger: Jewels Now", Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany 2003. () # "Ornament as art" The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA, Arnoldische Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany 2007. () # Helen W. Drutt and Peter Dormer, "Jewelry of our time: Art, Ornament and Obsession", Thames&Hudson, London 1995. () # David Watkins, "The Best in Contemporary Jewelry", Quarto Publishing plc, London 1993. ()

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schobinger, Bernhard Living people 1946 births Swiss artists Artists from Zürich Recipients of the Rakow Commission