Fritz Glarner (July 20, 1899 in Zurich – September 18, 1972 in

Locarno , neighboring_municipalities= Ascona, Avegno, Cadenazzo, Cugnasco, Gerra (Verzasca), Gambarogno, Gordola, Lavertezzo, Losone, Minusio, Muralto, Orselina, Tegna, Tenero-Contra , twintowns =* Gagra, Georgia * Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic ...

) was a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

-American

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. Glarner was a leading proponent of so-called

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 ...

, an artists' movement whose roots lead back to the painters of

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body o ...

and the principles of the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

. He was a disciple of

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...

, strongly influenced by Mondrian's theories of "dynamic symmetry." As he developed as an artist, his works began to be increasingly influenced by Mondrian's Neoplastic theory. His leaning toward nonrepresentational art had begun as early as 1929 in Paris, where he was a member of the Abstraction-Création group. Glarner took up Mondrian's motif of arranging simplified colors and forms on an architectural pattern. Glarner introduced a diagonal into the strict horizontal and vertical geometric aesthetic of Mondrian, creating new, yet equally systematic principles of composition that he termed "relational painting." Like Mondrian, Glarner limited his color palette to the primaries, red, yellow and blue. He expanded Mondrian's black "line" into a broad range of grays, used both as line and, like the primaries, as geometric areas of color. Many of his works are tondos, his signature relational principles ordered within a circle. Glarner's additions and alterations in structure and color to the Mondrian style gave his works a vitality and spatial dimensions. 24 of his works are owned by

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Lugano Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...

, Switzerland. A mural by Glarner is included in The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY.

Biography

Although Glarner was Swiss, born in Zurich, and kept close ties to his home country, he lived most of his life as an expatriate. He spent his childhood and youth in Italy and France. He studied and worked in Paris from 1923 to 1935. Glarner emigrated to the United States in 1936, living and working first in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and later at a studio and residence on

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

. In 1966 he was gravely injured in rough seas on an ocean liner crossing from Europe to America. He returned to

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

in 1971, taking residence in Locarno. He died the next year.

References

*''This article is based partially on the more extensive entry on the artist in the German Wikipedia. The artist's biography is drawn largely from Ms. Staber's monograph.''

Literature

* Werner Haftmann. Painting in the Twentieth Century. 2 vols. Praeger, New York, 1965. Page 341 and plate 389, fig. 971. * Margit Staber. Fritz Glarner: Monograph on One of the Leading Exponents of Concrete Art. ABC Verlag, Zurich 1976. * New York, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/hi_glarnerfritz.htm.

External links

* 20th-century Swiss painters Swiss male painters Abstract painters 1899 births 1972 deaths People from Locarno 20th-century Swiss male artists Swiss emigrants to the United States {{Switzerland-painter-stub