Life and Work
Erwin Friedrich Baumann was born in 1890 in Berne as the second of four children of the master builder and politician Friedrich Baumann (1835–1910) and Marie-Louise Baumann-Bigler (1856–1937). Right before starting school he got diphtheria, and the medical treatment at Rotbad (Diemtigtal) led to severe problems at school. Baumann writes in one of his biographical notes: “With the lowest quarter of my class I managed to get into the high school and may as well have slipped into the lecture-halls of the universities.“ Because of obstinacy towards one of his teachers, Baumann had to leave the high school.
After a year of practical work with an architect in Vevey followed his basic and non-commissioned officer training in the cavalry, then his high school graduation from the Minerva School in Zurich, and studies in art history and mathematics at the University of Berne. In 1911 he joined the students fraternity Rhenania, which regularly met at the restaurant Bubenberg in Berne. Here, Baumann often joined a table of Bernese artists (where he met among others Ferdinand Hodler). This company promoted his decision „to carve in the future not only heraldry and statuettes with his army knife.“ Insufficient and negligent care of his wounds after a fall from a horse during his training as non-commissioned officer, resulted in tuberculosis, what lead at last to his release from the army.
In spite of this incident Baumann dared to join the department of architecture of the Institute of Technology in Darmstadt. The decorative sculpting course of Professor Augusto Varnesi as well as the Darmstadt Artists' Colony Mathildenhöhe inspired him. However the First World War set an end to his studies in Germany.
After the outbreak of the war, Baumann, still with fragile health, participated as volunteer in protecting the Swiss border. In 1915 he was again released from military service and went for health treatments in Davos and Arosa. In 1918 Baumann joined the architectural office of Rudolf Gaberel in Davos, where he maintained friendships with Jakob Bosshart, Wilhelm Schwerzmann and the expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In 1919 he won the first prize in a contest for a monument for the Bernese cavalry units on the Lueg near Burgdorf. This project was, however, not realized, because he refused, to combine it with a, in his eyes, worthless relief of the sculptor Karl Hänny. In 1920 he acted on behalf of Rudolf Gaberel as local contractor and artistic designer for the forest cemetery Wildboden Davos.
In summer 1921 Baumann stayed in Paris as sculptor with Antoine Bourdelle. In the years 1921/22 he traveled to Egypt, where he worked as sculptor and architect and where he met among others Mahmoud Mokhtar. A longer educational trip through Greece, the Balkans and Austria lead Baumann back to Davos, where he worked again for Gaberel from 1922 through 1924.
From 1924 to 1929 Baumann lived in California. His brother Paul Baumann also lived there, working as an engineer. During this time, Baumann created numerous wood and stone sculptures, and on the side he was active as an architect. In 1925 he won the first prize for the artistic decoration of the main lobby in a new department store construction in Los Angeles, and in 1928 he won an award from the Los Angeles art museum for his stone sculpture Quarryman.
In 1929 Baumann went back to Switzerland, where he worked in Davos, Berne and Münchwilen, Thurgau. In 1938 he married the Russian-born Swiss Rita Keller and spent several months in Paris as sculptor under the guidance of Ossip Zadkine. In the year 1939, immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War, he acquired a farmhouse in Faulensee/Spiez, which he renovated as home for his family. At the outbreak of the war he volunteered again to participate in a civil guard unit of the army.
Because of an illness of his wife, Baumann moved in 1960 to Berne, where she died in1962. Till he died in the year 1980, Baumann had a workshop in the old animal hospital of Berne. Among his noteworthy works created in Faulensee and Berne are the following: The capitals of the castle of Wimmis (1950), the communion table in the church Lerchenfeld/Thun (1951), a fountain sculpture at the schoolhouse Krattigen (1953), the restoration of the Tschan house on the Schüpf in Faulensee (1952), of the Romanesque church Einigen/Spiez (1954/55), of the historic inn St. Urs in Biberist (SO) (1958–62), of the farmhouse „Les Aroles“ as annex of the Palace Hotel (now owned by Spiros Latsis) in Gstaad (1954), and of the church Radelfingen/Aarberg (1958–65), the excavation of the St. Columban chapel in Faulensee (1960/61) and the construction management for the expansion of the sugar factory Aarberg (1958–60), for the new construction of the British embassy in Bern (1962) and for the administrative building of the Bernese power company (1960–63).
Read more about this topic: Erwin Friedrich Baumann
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or work:
“Our role is to support anything positive in black life and destroy anything negative that touches it. You have no other reason for being. I don’t understand art for art’s sake. Art is the guts of the people.”
—Elma Lewis (b. 1921)
“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)