Cuno Amiet

1868 Solothurn – 1961 Oschwand

Cuno Amiet is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern paint­ing in Switzerland, but also worked as an etcher, wood engraver and lithographer. From 1886 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, after which he studied with his friend Giovanni Giacometti at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1892 the young artist spent what was an extremely important year for him in Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he befriended students of Paul Gauguin such as Paul Sérusier, Émile Bernard and Roderic O’Conor and also came into contact with paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. Amiet’s works, which were now shown with increasing frequency at exhibitions, soon attracted the attention of Die Brücke, a group of Expressionist artists which came to regard him as one of their own and, at the request of Erich Heckel, made him a member.