C-Figure

History of the work

On the lawn north-east of the main building of the gibb vocational school stands an iron sculpture by Bernhard Luginbühl. The city’s register dates it to after 1958, Wikimedia Commons to about 1960. According to Wikidata it is around 180 centimetres high.

The title stands for a group of works. SIKART lists the “C-Figuren” (1958–1964) among the series with which Luginbühl explored iron sculpture from the mid-1950s, alongside “Element”, “Aggression”, “Raumhaken”, “Strahler” and “Bulldog”. On these mostly still smaller pieces, SIKART says, he learned the material and the statics he would later need for his gigantic figures.

The site is in Luginbühl’s own neighbourhood: he was the son of a butcher from the Lorraine district. After training as a stone sculptor and taking courses at the school of applied arts, he helped Arnold Rüdlinger, the director of the Kunsthalle Bern, to install exhibitions. There he saw modern sculpture by Julio González, Alexander Calder and Eduardo Chillida. At the end of 1949 he showed a first bull made of iron at the Kunsthalle, which according to SIKART caused some bewilderment. In 1968 he set up his “Grosser Zyklop” (Great Cyclops) in front of the Kunsthalle.

The school building itself was built from 1937 to 1939 and, according to the city’s building inventory, is one of the pioneering works of modernist architecture in Bern: a long, five-storey block on columns with a strict façade grid. Inside are two murals from 1941, “Übung” (Exercise) by Marguerite Frey-Surbek and “Bau I” (Building I) by Albert Neuenschwander. Right next to the lawn, the footbridge with Max Neuhaus’s sound installation leads to the campus building at number 5.

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: Lorrainestrasse 1/1a (Gewerbeschule) · Wikidata: C-Figur (Q88326794) · Wikimedia Commons: C-Figur (Bernhard Luginbühl ca. 1960)