Italianita for Brienz

On October 30, 1887, Hans Kienholz, head of the Schnitzler School in BrienzToday woodcarving school, to Italy. The training trip lasted until December 4 and went via Milan, Genoa, Pisa, Rome, Siena to Florence and from Bologna back to Brienz. In March 1888 he reported to the Governing Council of the Canton of Bern and thanked them for their financial support.

Unlike many educational travelers of the time, who leisurely discovered Italian culture with Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone (1818-1897) or the Baedecker in their luggage, the route of the teacher from Brienz was meticulously planned, as the time would be specific for “artistic[n] details[n]» which «provided a special perspective to be used in a didactic direction».

In the search for contemporary models for education, in addition to historical monuments, modern architecture, applied art model collections and technical schools were also visited. These institutions arose in connection with the reform of the arts and crafts, which spread from England to Europe in the second half of the 19th century.

This development was based on industrialization and the attendant mass production of consumer goods, the design of which was criticized and the cost-effective production of which meant competition for the artisans. In 1884 the Federal Council therefore decided to subsidize commercial training, such as the woodcarving school in Brienz. The region in the Bernese Oberland hoped for contemporary goods and economic success from the aesthetic education of the sculptors.

Kienholz’s first journey in his capacity as head teacher did not lead to Italy, where industrialization started slowly and most of the training continued to take place in the traditional workshop. Instead, German-speaking Switzerland looked to Germany and more often to Austria, whose education system was led by the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna was considered exemplary. When Kienholz visited there in 1886, he was particularly struck by the wood carvings of the world-famous Luigi Frullini (1839-1897) from Florence. He already knew his work from photos from his classes in Brienz and was now able to study the originals.

A year later he was in the Via Santa Caterina in Florence in front of Luigi Frullini’s house, where he was warmly received. “As in ancient Rome and in Siena in the Middle Ages, so have [ich] Here my main focus is on modern woodcarving, furniture and sculpture, for which Florence is world famous», Kienholz summarized the six-day stay in Florence. With lavish interiors, Frullini had secured Florence’s reputation as a center for woodcarving in Europe and the United States.

Johann Abplanalp, a teacher at the Brienz school, which at the time was still focused on drawing lessons, had already discussed the Paris World Exhibition in 1878 in the board meeting of the Oberland Schnitzlerverein reported that Frullinis is working «literally snapped away» became. He complained about the exorbitant prices; in front of «a stuffing of a cupboard» would have had to pay 10,000 francs and for «small reliefs with groups of children» 600 to 1200 francs. As role models in the classroom, they would: «almost worth its weight in gold» Hans Kienholz also stated.

In historicism, the Tuscan masters were admired for their technical and artistic skills – qualities that, according to the then view, they owed to their proximity to the Renaissance originals. Such engravings seemed to blur the boundaries between fine art and applied art, allowing them to serve primarily as models in the classroom. Because the reformers promised that the convergence of arts and crafts would improve the formal quality of industrial products.

However, criticism was leveled at the «naturalism» of the lavish carvings, which were mainly intended for wealthy customers. Abplanalp also discovered that Frullini multiplies the «Towards a naturalistic direction» and that «the cupboard is only there for the filling» shine Not surprisingly, in Brienz this «naturalistic zeal for decoration» was received with an ambivalent attitude, as a reorientation of the training was intended to counter the accusation of narrative imitation of nature, which was mainly attributable to foreign clients.

For between the recognition of rich decorations and the question of the reduction of the ornament in view of the function that an object fulfilled, a contradiction arose that, over the century, increasingly questioned carving as a design medium. . However, the study of the original engravings of the early Renaissance associated Kienholz and his contemporaries with the hope of overcoming this conflict. With the ordering principle of these simple, flat, stylized vegetal forms from the 15th century, a method seemed to have been found to advance the understanding of the practical and material-appropriate execution of objects for modern daily life, not only for the benefit of the wealthy. class of society.

It was the realization of this tradition and the importance of studying the originals of the Tuscan Renaissance for contemporary education that led Hans Kienholz to summarize his trip to Italy with the words: “What I have now seen in Italy, I must say that for people in our field no other city offers as much study as Florence; I can only look back on my stay there with the greatest pleasure.”