User:ERASWK/Swiss art

"The pragmatic attitude of the population... is reflected in its arts; it does not aim at top performance nor to create its own style; it is satisfied to adapt the influences that converge from all sides to its own needs; without losing its independence of throught or merely to follow current modes... (Paul Ganz, 1940)

Swiss Art is like Swiss food, which at its best is excellent but has many of the culinary characteristics borrowed (and never returned) from neighbours: French, German, Italian. Its art and artists are similarly cosmopolitan. Was Has Holbein the Yonger Swiss or German, or English for that matter? Born in Augsburg, Germany, he became a burgher of Basel where he spent 17 years, on and off, before the Reformation deprived him of work, at which point he went to England. Paul Klee, on the contrary, was born in Switzerland, but as a German subject spent most of his life in Germany before returning to die in Switzerland. And so it was with many Swiss-born artists who went abroad to study art since there was no Academy in their own country, remaining there to paint. Inversely, many foreign painters came to Switzerland to enjoy the peace and beauty of the landscape. Swiss art, like its food, it thus cosmopolitan. ERASWK (talk) 08:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Gallery
--ERASWK (talk) 19:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)