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René Bernasconi (* April 15 1910 in Strasbourg, France; † August 4 1994 in Basel, Switzerland) was a Swiss painter, graphic artist and sculptor. His last place of residence was Paradiso TI.

Life
René Bernasconi is born in Strasbourg as the son of the dentist Emilio Bernasconi and his wife Anna (née Klein). He spent his childhood and school years in Lugano, where his parents gave free rein to his artistic inclinations and where he won a school painting competition at the age of 9.

He finished school at the age of 16 and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. Between 1926 and 1930 he worked with lithography, applied art, oil, watercolour and tempera painting. He then continued his studies in Paris at private schools until 1934 and occasionally moved to the south of France, where he earned his living with stage decorations and equipment in the casinos of Marseille, Nice and Cannes as well as lithograph work in printing houses. In Cannes he met the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, with whom he became lifelong friends. The exchange with him helped Bernasconi to further refine his style and to break away from previous pictorial traditions.

When he returned to Switzerland, he later had to do military service from 1943 to 1945. He then moved to Basel in 1946, where, in addition to his artistic work, he worked part-time in a lithography institute for several years. Study trips took him to Mediterranean countries, England, Scandinavia, North and South Africa.

As in his time as an apprentice, it is typical for him to live out his talents in various techniques in Basel. For example, he has been involved with glass painting, mosaics and reliefs on the basis of invitations to tender issued by the State Art Loan, and wall painting on the basis of private commissions.

His later works included travel sketches, nude studies and portraits as well as colourful landscapes.

Work
SIKART, the encyclopedia of the Swiss Institute for Art Studies, lists five group exhibitions of Bernasconi at the Kunsthalle Basel during his lifetime, as well as posthumously one each at the Kantonale Pinakothek Giovanni Züst in Rancate ("Gruppo di famiglia in un interno. La collezione Bellasi di Lugano. Lugano e il Ticino in dipinti, stampe, antichi libri e carte geografiche") and in the Museo civico di belle arti in Lugano ("Il confronto con la modernità, 1914-1953").1] In 2000 there was an exhibition together with works by Zobrist/Waeckerlin and Claudia Müller at the Aargauer Kunsthaus[2]; in 2002 and 2006 he was shown in solo exhibitions at the Demenga Gallery in Basel ("René Bernascconi")[3] and the Lilian Andree Gallery in Riehen ("René Bernasconi (1910 to 1994). Painting and Watercolours")[1].

In 1959, Bernasconi received a direct order from the Basel Building Department for four large concrete reliefs for the new school building in Engelgasse in Basel's St. Alban district. In the early 1990s he was one of the artists - along with Joseph Beuys, Francesco Clemente and Hieronymus Emil Bischoff, among others - from whom larger groups of works or individual works came as gifts to the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel of the Kunstmuseum Basel.[4] In addition, his works found their way into the BEWE Collection, whose focus is on the Red-Blue Group,[5] as well as into the collection "Swiss Art of the 20th Century" of the National Insurance Company.[6]

Reception
In its obituary, the Basler Zeitung wrote that Bernasconi "with his noble abstractions had belonged to the habitats of the municipal exhibition business". In addition, he had developed a pictorial language that "knew violent driving as well as restrained, modern gestures". His late work was determined by "an impetuosity that hardly betrayed the eighty-year-old author"[7].

On the occasion of the exhibition "Einstrahlung-Ausstrahlung III" in the Demenga Gallery, the Riehener Zeitung listed Bernasconi and Mark Tobey as two examples of "ingenious artists who were successful in their homeland" who came to Basel and settled there.[8]

Awards
For the lithograph Tamburino della morte (1955) he was awarded the gold medal at the Reggio Emilia Biennale.

Works (selection)

 * Fanny, 1955, Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt
 * Passeggiata a cavallo, 1965, Museo Caccia, Lugano
 * Sotto la pioggia, 1965, Privatbesitz
 * Hommage à Giacometti, 1970, Privatbesitz

Literature

 * Dorothea Christ, Aldo Patocchi, Vinicio Salati: Der Maler René Bernasconi, Schwabe, Basel 1989
 * Laure Bohrer, Giorgio L Bellardi: René Bernasconi. 1910 bis 1994 : sein Leben, sein Werk, Schwabe, Basel 2004
 * José Warmund-Cordelier, Laure Iselin-Bohrer: Kleine Reise durch das Oeuvre von René Bernasconi, Petri, Basel 2013