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Adelboden – Bernese Oberland

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Creator Carlo Pellegrini
Printing year 1907
Sheet size (cm) 111.5×75
Printing technique Lithograph
Printer A. Trüb & Cie.
Condition B+
Asking price 4'400 CHF
Categories Bern(ese Oberland), Switzerland

A wonderful original Art Nouveau poster by the Italian painter Carlo Pellegrini (1866 – 1937) depicting the Engstligen valley basin, in the background the Wildstrubel and the Steghorn as well as the Engstligen waterfalls with a drop of over 600 meters.

After training at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, Pellegrini first moved to Geneva in 1900, where he worked for the publishing house Vouga, and then to Adelboden – which is why this town, that was still comparatively insignificant in terms of tourism at the time, was able to advertise itself with several outstanding and, above all, by Swiss standards already very modern posters. We can only speculate as to why Pellegrini moved to the end of the Engstligen Valley of all places; one factor may have been that he was already considered a “poeta delle nevi”, a “poet of the snow”, so he was at least not entirely wrong in Adelboden.

We can also only speculate as to why the SBB seems to have commissioned this poster (see the note on the left under the motif); Adelboden is one of the few tourist resorts in the Swiss Alps that has never been connected by train.

maybe of interest as well:

Bernese Oberland is niiice