Urn niche installation

History of the work

In section FAM6 of the Schosshalde cemetery, a concrete wall holds back the slope and at the same time contains niches for urns. The installation was designed by the Bernese sculptor Mariann Grunder; the city dates it to 1975 to 1978. The artists' lexicon SIKART lists it among Grunder's works as an urn wall made of concrete elements. A photograph on Wikimedia Commons shows that a small inner courtyard is also part of the installation.

The concrete elements have a history in Grunder's work. According to SIKART, from 1969 she designed components that could be combined with one another and formed recurring shapes when placed in series. Cast in concrete, she used them for relief walls and free-standing sculptures, for instance in 1970/71 at school buildings in Marl (Germany) and in Oberdorf in the canton of Solothurn. Grunder was also a member of Bern's cemetery commission. After the Schosshalde installation she made an urn courtyard with a fountain at the Nesslerenholz cemetery in Wabern in 1979–1981, again from concrete elements.

Mariann Grunder was born in Bern on 16 January 1926 and died there on 28 April 2016. She first qualified as a primary school teacher and painted before starting an apprenticeship as a sculptor with Werner Dubi in Gümligen in 1954. From 1958 she worked in her own studio in Rubigen, and in 1960 she completed her training in Paris with László Szabó. In 1964 she had her first solo exhibition at Galerie Schindler in Bern; she shared a long friendship with Meret Oppenheim. The Kunstmuseum Bern showed an overview of her work in 1986.

In the SIKART article on the older sculptor Max Fueter, Grunder is counted among the generation with whom the avant-garde gained ground in Bern in the 1950s as well. Fueter's bronze 'Kniende' (Kneeling Woman) stands only about 150 metres away by the deaconesses' cemetery within the same grounds. On site, look at how the cast elements repeat along the wall.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · SIKART: Mariann Grunder (Marie Therese Bätschmann) · Wikipedia (de): Mariann Grunder · SIKART: Max Fueter (Johanna Strübin Rindisbacher) · Wikimedia Commons: Betoninstallation Urnennischenanlage Schosshaldenfriedhof (Mariann Grunder 1978) · Wikipedia (de): Schosshaldenfriedhof