Susanna Bathing

History of the work

In the courtyard behind the National Library, on the Bernastrasse side, stands a bronze figure by Hans von Matt titled 'Susanna im Bade' (Susanna Bathing). The city of Bern dates it to 1931. In the sculptor's list of works, the artists' lexicon SIKART records a bronze 'Susanne' at the National Library in Bern with the year 1951; the photograph on Wikimedia Commons is captioned 'Susanna' and 1931. The available sources do not settle which date is correct.

1931 is also the year in which what was then the Swiss National Library moved into its new building at Hallwylstrasse 15. Following a national competition in 1927, the architects Oeschger, Kaufmann and Hostettler built it from 1929 to 1931. It is regarded as an early example of Neues Bauen, the modernist 'new building' movement, and is a listed monument; before that, the library had been housed in the Federal Archives building since 1899.

Hans von Matt was born in Stans on 7 May 1899 and died there on 8 November 1985. He studied at the school of applied arts in Lucerne, at the Geneva Ecole des Beaux-Arts and from 1921 to 1923 at the Munich academy; in Paris he took courses with André Lhote. From 1924 he worked in Stans, at first as a painter and from 1930 mainly as a sculptor. SIKART describes his figures of the 1930s as closed volumes with clear outlines. Besides church sculpture and grave monuments he repeatedly made female nudes and half-nudes.

Von Matt was also active in cultural policy: from 1941 (1942 according to the HLS) to 1953 he sat on the Federal Art Commission, from 1947 to 1974 he was curator of the Historical Museum in Stans, and in 1969 he received the Central Switzerland Culture Prize. His wife was the artist Annemarie von Matt. On site, look up from the courtyard at the library building, completed in 1931.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Wikipedia (de): Hans von Matt (Künstler) · SIKART: Hans von Matt (Sandi Paucic) · HLS: Matt, Hans von (Tapan Bhattacharya) · Wikipedia (de): Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek · Wikimedia Commons: Bronzestatue Susanna (Hans von Matt 1931)