Loubegaffer: the face in Bern station that watches you

Anyone walking through the Christoffel underpass beneath Bahnhofplatz is being watched. From a niche in the wall, a young man with tousled hair looks out, his chin resting in both hands. This is the Loubegaffer. It is the work of the Bernese artist Sandro Del-Prete and was made in 1984.

Why it watches you

The Loubegaffer is an inversion statue. The face does not bulge outwards like an ordinary bust; it is worked inwards, so it is hollow. Even so, from the front it looks convex. Our brain always expects a face to have a nose that sticks out, so it reads the hollow shape the wrong way. As you walk past the figure, the head seems to turn with you, and the eyes follow you.

It works best if you walk slowly from one side to the other and keep your eyes on the figure. Try it with children too: most of them stop and walk past it once more straight away.

Who is Sandro Del-Prete?

Sandro Del-Prete was born in Bern in 1937. He became known for pictures of optical illusions that are often compared with the work of M. C. Escher. In 1960 he studied for six months at the art academy in Florence. There, as he told Swiss radio and television (SRF) in 2018, he read in an old book about statues that follow the viewer with their eyes. He wanted to solve that puzzle. In 1981 his first book of drawings, “Illusorismen”, came out.

From the corner into the light

For a long time the Loubegaffer stood in a back corner of the station, where hardly anyone noticed it. When the Christoffel underpass was rebuilt in 2007, it got a better place, right in the stream of commuters. The work is listed in the City of Bern's inventory of public art.

Good to know

The name is Bernese German: here the arcades of the Old Town are called “Loube”, and a “Gaffer” is someone who looks on curiously. The figure is freely accessible, you do not need a ticket. The underpass links the station with Bahnhofplatz, and right next to it stands the Heiliggeistkirche. If you walk from there into the Old Town, you soon come to the first figure fountains. The map Kunst in Bern shows more public art, and the sights in Bern list more places.