Ma vie, les autres: the painter Gustav Stettler (1913 - 2005)

Conceptualized by Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth and Isabel Zürcher 

The people in his early paintings look silent and hold their hands folded in their laps. Some heads are tilted, and the protagonists are framed by facades without horizons. Gustav Stettler, born in rural Oberdiessbach in the canton of Bern in 1913 and who came to Basel in 1934, established himself early on as a serious voice in the scene of young Swiss painters. Unlike some of his colleagues, he did not focus on the art metropolis of his time: his Paris was Basel – a city whose residential and functional buildings, as well as the nearby war, cast their shadows over living spaces.

But Gustav Stettler's work does not only include witnesses of a burdened time. He is also fascinated by the face of the younger generation. His portraits of "teenagers" in the 1950s were joined by a whole group of "hippies" around 1970. The hippie woman with glasses and hat, the rocker as an urban rebel: how do such refusers of bourgeois lifestyles enter the stage of Stettler's art? As a teacher at the arts and crafts department of the Gewerbeschule and as the juror of the Christmas exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel, the established painter himself came under fire from a new generation of artists in 1967. He had to accept that a completely different artistic mentality was taking hold in the "Galerie Gustav," which had opened at short notice, and that a "Gustav Prize Basel" promised to promote the young scene in, of all things, drawing and printmaking, his teaching subjects.

Ma vie, les autres recommends Gustav Stettler's work to a view that does not set convention and rebellion against each other, but proposes a reading, how the painter’s self-image changes from the 1940s to the 1980s. From being a reminding observer, the painter also becomes a chronicler of a society in transition. 

The exhibition is being created in dialogue with the Kunstmuseum Thun. Gustav Stettler will be the subject there from February 10 to April 24, 2024. In the context of collection's holdings by other artists as well, the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Thun explores the tense relationship between rural origins and urban living space in Gustav Stettler's work (curated by Helen Hirsch and Astrid Sedlmeier).

To accompany the exhibition at Kunst Raum Riehen, a "Gazette Gustave" will be published, which will explore the topics of the exhibition in greater depth in text and images.