NEW PUBLICATION

RENÉ GROEBLI – THE MAGIC EYE

BOOK SIGNING AND EXHIBITION

Book signing and exhibition opening: Wednesday, February 26th, 6 to 8 pm
Guest speaker: Stefan Zweifel, philosopher and curator
The exhibition lasts until Saturday, March 21st


This photography book is the first-ever presentation of René Groebli's pictures spanning a good half-century. The photographs are not arranged in strict chronological order, but rather represent what might be called a lyrical response to René Groebli's approach, for his perception of the world is as much felt as it is seen.

It is a feast for the eyes when the lifework of this artist and photographer passes in review. Every picture of this artist is a remembrance of lived time. An outstanding, astonishing oeuvre has accumulated in the course of his life. This publication bears witness. An enchanted world, page after page. It reveals René Groebli as a magician with the camera and the camera as his magic eye.
Daniel Blochwitz, from the foreword  

The photo book RENÉ GROEBLI – THE MAGIC EYE is published by Edition Bildhalle: Limited edition of 800 copies, 300 signed and numbered by the artist. Highest printing quality, cover in linen. Format 23.5 x 33.5 cm, 200 pages, 122 photos in color and black and white. With texts by Daniel Blochwitz, Guido Magnaguagno, Daniele Muscionico, Hans-Michael Koetzle, René Groebli and Stefan Zweifel.

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René Groebli was born on the 9th of October 1927 in Zurich. In 1945 he attended the foundation course at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich and from 1946 the specialist photography class run by Hans Finsler. Between 1946 and 1948 he completed his training as a documentary cameraman at Central Film and Gloria Film in Zurich and acquired a diploma. As a photo reporter he carried out assignments for the magazine Die Woche and later travelled in Africa and the Middle East for the London agency Black Star.

His first two book publications were Rail Magic (Magie der Schiene, 1949), a poetic essay, and the image series The Eye of Love (Das Auge der Liebe, 1952). In the exhibition The Family of Man which Edward Steichen had organized for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, René Groebli was represented together with the Swiss photographers Werner Bischof, Robert Frank and Gotthard Schuh. In 1954 the Council of Swiss Photographers accepted him as a member, together with Robert Frank.

In the mid-fifties he left photo journalism and founded his own studio for advertising and industrial photography. Groebli specialized in color photography and experimented with the Dye-Transfer process. In 1957, the American magazine Color Annual honored him as “Master of Color”. After the early 1980s he no longer carried out any commercial assignments and returned to his artistic essays in black and white. Towards the end of the 20th and during the first decade of the 21st century he reprocessed his image archive and digitalized the most important photographs of his oeuvre which he had created in the course of sixty years.

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“René Groebli staged, assembled, collaged everything he did – with only analogue means at his disposal. He sourced the avant-garde of the 1920s, applying their cornucopia of ideas to his chromatic universe without having recourse to digital technology. The darkroom was his laboratory. What came out of it now looks as if it had been generated by a computer. This may well explain why many of his visual inventions remain disconcerting, disturbing and incomprehensible: they are situated, both technically and aesthetically, between the avant-garde of new photography in the Bauhaus era and the avant-garde of computer-generated visions in our contemporary, post-modern world.

Once again, René Groebli proves to be the missing link between eras, times and traditions. What's more, this idiosyncratic designer couldn't care less about isms and has always charted a path of his own.”

From “Master of color – seismograph of an era” by Hans-Michael Koetzle

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BILDHALLE
Gallery for classic and contemporary photography
‍Stauffacherquai 56
8004 Zurich

Opening hours:
Wednesday to Friday: 12-6.30 pm, Saturday 11 am to 4 pm (Monday and Tuesday by appointment)

www.bildhalle.ch