Rooster (Güggel)

History of the work

By the stairs leading up to the playground of the Sonnenhof school sits a stone rooster, called a “Güggel” in Bernese dialect. Bernhard Luginbühl carved it in 1955 from Belgian granite. Wikidata gives a height of 140 centimetres, with a length of 145 and a width of 120 centimetres.

The work stands out in Luginbühl’s output. The Bernese artist trained as a stone sculptor from 1945 to 1948 while attending the school of applied arts. He later destroyed almost all of his early figures in wood and stone, and from 1953, according to SIKART, he worked almost exclusively in iron. Two years later, all the same, this animal figure in granite was made here. Animals remained a main theme throughout his life: the son of a butcher from the Lorraine district later welded bulls, giraffes and elephants out of iron.

The school was built from 1948 to 1950 as the Burgernziel school, a pavilion complex of simple, white-rendered buildings around two courtyards. The building inventory highlights the clarity of the layout and the way the outdoor spaces are part of the design. Today the school is called Sonnenhof; a new east wing was added in 2005/06. In the stairwell the mural “Märchenwald” (Fairy-tale Forest) by Carl Bieri has been on view since 1951.

Luginbühl (1929–2011) became one of the most important figures in Swiss iron sculpture, as the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland notes. He showed at documenta in Kassel in 1964 and 1977, and Switzerland presented itself at the 1967 world’s fair in Montreal with his sculpture “Tell”. He died in Langnau im Emmental in 2011. Walk on to the playground and you will find the blue “Periskop” by Natsuko Tamba Wyder from 2007 on the courtyard wall of the school.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Wikipedia (de): Bernhard Luginbühl · HLS: Matthias Frehner, Luginbühl, Bernhard · SIKART: Tobia Bezzola, Bernhard Luginbühl · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Jolimontstrasse 1 (Schulhaus Burgernziel/Sonnenhof) · Wikidata: Güggel (Q63969305) · Wikimedia Commons: Güggel (Bernhard Luginbühl 1955)