Bernhard Luginbühl

 

Bernhard Luginbühl (16 February 1929 – 19 February 2011)was a Swiss sculptor.He created iron sculptures in the late 1950s. In 1976 he started with building giant wooden sculptures which he set on fire as an art event.His work featured a variety of materials, including iron, bones, wood and even weapons and industrial waste.After grad­u­at­ing from the School of Applied Arts in Bern (1948), Bernard Lug­in­bühl (*1929) started work­ing in Bern. The artist cre­ated his pieces in a vari­ety of media: wood, stone and pri­mar­ily since 1949, iron. In his lager than life-sized iron sculp­tures a sat­is­fy­ing mon­u­men­tal­ity encoun­ters a cre­ative play­ful­ness deeply rooted in the mate­r­ial. A char­ac­ter­is­tic of Luginbühl’s work is the ten­sion between move­ment and counter-movement, between dynamic ele­ments mov­ing into space and sup­port­ing struc­tures con­trol­ling the movements.“Every little thing has meaning for me,” said Luginbühl on the occasion of his 2003 exhibition at Museum Tinguely in Basel.A park in Bern showcases about 60 of his enormous rusty creations, including animal figures.In addition to sculpture, Luginbühl also produced graphic design, lyric poetry and more fleeting works such as burning things in public as a form of protest.The son of a butcher, the Bern-born Luginbühl remained very down-to-earth despite the critical acclaim he received.