Opening of the Bern Art Salon

An early, if not the first, poster by Bernese artist Albert Bütschi, who later worked in Paul Otto Althaus’s advertising studio and earned his living as a theater painter and through commissioned works like this one. While here he depicts a rather harmless poor Pallas Athena, who once again has to serve as a prop (which may well be due to the client who desperately wanted a goddess), Bütschi stood out in the 1930s with thoroughly modern and innovative posters for consumer products that sharpened the profile of these brand-name goods that were just then emerging.

Fritz Brand, for his part, was initially a rather modestly successful painter before he opened the first true art gallery in Bern in 1917 with his art salon in a prime location. That same year, he dedicated two solo exhibitions to Ferdinand Hodler; Albert Bütschi was represented in two group exhibitions a year later. However, the Bernese gallery scene and art trade only really took off with the return of Le Corbusier's childhood friend August Klipstein from Frankfurt, who moved in with Richard Gutekunst near the Zytglogge in early 1920 and began distributing graphic works, including through exhibitions: old masters, but also contemporaries such as Cuno Amiet, Lovis Corinth, Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, Max Liebermann, and Ferdinand Hodler – the beginning of today's Galerie Kornfeld.

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