René Groebli was born in Zürich in 1927. He studied photography with Hans Finsler at the Zürich University of the Arts and went on to become one of the greatest black-and-white photographers and one of the most subtle masters of the darkroom.
In the early 1950s, he worked worldwide as a photojournalist for Life, Picture Post and various other international illustrated magazines and agencies. When he was only 26 years old, in 1953, he was invited to take part in the legendary exhibit The Family of Man, which was curated by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and later shown in numerous museums worldwide. His photographic love letter The Eye of Love of his belated honeymoon is in the MoMA's collection. In 1954, Groebli was accepted as a member of the Academy of Swiss Photographers - along with Robert Frank. In Germany his talent was discovered by the famous photographer Otto Steinert, founding member of the legendary avantgardistic group fotoform and René Groebli’s ‘Bewegungsbilder’ were exhibited 1951 and 1954 in his exhibits subjektive fotografie. He was an innovator with his color photography work as well. His pioneering work earned him the title Master of Color in 1957 in the renowned American magazine Color Annual. Indeed, René Groebli counts among the most experimentative personalities in the history of photography. He gained attention with his fascinating movement studies and avant-garde color photos, which are represented today in many international collections.
With COLOR WORK, René Groebli did pioneering work. He made the colored world of the 1960s even more colorful with great imagination and innovative visual language. Years before Andy Warhol and Pop Art, decades before Photoshop and digital image processing, he experimented with color effects, alienation, fades, montages, double exposures, reflections, separations, solarizations etc.. However, his favorite medium was the elaborate dye transfers, which offered his creativity unlimited possibilities of variation.
The exhibit comprises an introduction with 6 of his classic-b/w images (65x50 cm and 40x50cm) followed by 65 colored photographs, fine art prints, all artist proofed, framed in sizes from 55x 50 cm to 133x 93 cm and historical back ground material for glass boxes. The exhibit is ready for hanging.
High resolution scans of a variety of images will be made available for the purposes of PR, invitations and posters. Marketing texts, a CV, photograph captions, as well as texts and quotations by René Groebli about his life, photography, and work will likewise be made available as editable files in both German and English.
The exhibit is accompanied by the book COLOR WORK, published by Sturm & Drang Publishers, Zürich, Switzerland 2018, (130 pp., 96 ill., in duotone, hardcover ), and can be ordered via BuchsteinerArtManagement.
Additional information available upon request.
