Pan

History of the work

On a lawn on the bank of the Aare in the Marzili, a male bronze figure that looks larger than life rests on a low stone base. The naked, muscular body is half raised, one leg drawn up, one arm resting on the knee, the other supporting the torso. Behind the figure the Aare flows past.

Fueter made the figure in 1943. The Swiss artists' lexicon SIKART lists it as „Grosser Pan“ (Great Pan) and notes that it was only erected in 1964; why more than twenty years passed before it was set up is not stated in the sources consulted. Nearby, the Dalmazi Bridge, a flat-spanned bridge of prestressed concrete, has crossed the Aare since 1957–58.

For Fueter the human figure was the subject of a lifetime. SIKART sees in his beautiful bodies the image of an ideal human being and places his work within the „spiritual national defence“ of the interwar and war years; after the new departures of the 1950s, when artists such as Walter Linck and Bernhard Luginbühl were working in iron in Bern, his figures lost their topicality.

Max Fueter was born on 6 March 1898, according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland and Wikipedia in Konolfingen, according to SIKART in Bern. After his school-leaving exam at the Literargymnasium in 1917 he modelled with his boyhood friend Karl Geiser and took drawing lessons with Ernst Linck and Victor Surbek. From 1926 to 1929 he worked in Berlin, then in Rome, and from 1929 to 1955 in Wabern. His works in Bern include the Flute Player at the conservatory and the Fountain of Life on the Grosse Schanze. From 1950 to 1954 he sat on the municipal art commission. He died in Bern on 29 September 1983.

A second work by Fueter is close by: for the Marzili open-air pool he made a Discus Thrower between 1932 and 1934.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · SIKART Lexikon: Max Fueter · Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz: Max Fueter · Wikipedia (de): Max Fueter · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Dalmazibrücke · Wikimedia Commons: Foto des Werks (Ansicht)