Kneeling Woman

History of the work

By the deaconesses' cemetery, part of the Schosshalde cemetery, a bronze figure of a kneeling woman stands on a stone base. Max Fueter made it in 1931. According to the city's records, the cast bears the mark of the foundry W. Geister & Co. of Berlin-Lichterfelde on the back left edge.

The Berlin foundry points to Fueter's years in Germany. The artists' lexicon SIKART reports that he worked in Berlin from 1926 to 1929 and moved there in the circle of the sculptors Alexander Zschokke and Ludwig Thormaelen and the painter Erich Heckel. In 1929 and 1930 he lived in Rome on a grant from the Gleyre Foundation, and afterwards in Wabern near Bern until 1955.

Fueter was born on 6 March 1898; SIKART gives Bern as his birthplace, the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland Konolfingen. From 1907 to 1914 he grew up in the Burgerliches Waisenhaus, an orphanage of Bern's burgher community, passed his school-leaving exam at the Literargymnasium and in 1918 entered the trade school, where he modelled with his friend Karl Geiser. In the same year he showed a boy's head at the first exhibition of the new Kunsthalle Bern. Alongside this he attended lectures in philosophy, art history and psychology at the university.

The human figure remained his subject. In Bern his works include the discus thrower at the Marzili baths, the flute player in the arcade of Rathausgasse and the fountain of life on the Schanzenterrasse. From 1950 to 1954 he sat on the city's art commission. Fueter died in Bern on 29 September 1983. Walk around the figure to find the foundry mark on the back left edge.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · SIKART: Max Fueter (Johanna Strübin Rindisbacher) · HLS: Fueter, Max (Tapan Bhattacharya) · Wikipedia (de): Max Fueter · Wikipedia (de): Schosshaldenfriedhof