Ernst Morgenthaler

Ernst Morgenthaler was born in 1887 in the canton of Berne. He didn’t like his first job as a clerk, so he dedicated himself to drawing instead. In 1912 and 1913 he took drawing courses in Zurich and Berlin, and at 27 he went to Cuno Amiet to learn oil painting. In 1915 he met Paul Klee in Munich. In 1920, he started being successful and taking part in numerous exhibitions. In 1928 he moved to Paris with his family, where he painted intensively and expanded his skills. He went back to Zurich in 1931 but kept undertaking trips to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, the South of France and Italy. Morgenthaler took an active part in Zurich’s cultural life and was friends with lots of writers, painters, sculptors and musicians. From 1951 to 1953 he was president of the Federal Art Commission. Ernst Morgenthaler was one of the most important Swiss figurative painters from the 1920s to the 1960s. He created an extensive oeuvre of oil paintings, murals, watercolours and drawings and had a great number of exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad. He concentrated on simple subjects taken from his own life and surroundings and only painted things he saw or experienced himself or things that touched him personally.

Posters by Ernst Morgenthaler