Venus

History of the work

In the playground in front of the assembly hall of the Wankdorf school at Morgartenstrasse 2 stands “Venus”, a sculpture of Tuscan travertine. The Bernese sculptor Mariann Grunder made it in 1982 and 1983. The work belongs to the City of Bern's collection of art in public space.

The school itself is older. After a competition in 1956/57, the architects Marcel Mäder and Karl Brüggemann built it from 1959 to 1961 in the triangle between Morgartenstrasse and Sempachstrasse. Three low rectangular blocks enclose an almost square yard on three sides. The city's building inventory sees models of classical modernism in the complex, especially buildings by Le Corbusier, and singles out the clearly shaped schoolyard.

Mariann Grunder (1926–2016) grew up in Bern and qualified as a primary school teacher in 1946. From 1946 she travelled regularly to Paris and at first painted. From 1954 she learned the craft from the stonemason and sculptor Werner Dubi in Gümligen and in 1958 set up her own studio house in Rubigen, where she lived until her death. Grants allowed her to continue her training with László Szabó in Paris. She was a friend of Meret Oppenheim and in 1967 exhibited together with Bruno Meier at the Helmhaus in Zurich.

In 1986 the Kunstmuseum Bern devoted a large retrospective to her, and in 2008 she received the federal Meret Oppenheim Prize. According to an obituary in the trade journal “Kunst und Stein”, she was active in cultural policy for the city and canton of Bern for many years and sat on the board of the Kunsthalle Bern as a delegate of the artists' society GSMBA. She worked in stone into old age; in 2007 she had marble blocks brought to Bern for an exhibition in Peccia.

Wikipedia describes her early sculptures as mostly round, organic forms. In the 1980s, the period of “Venus”, she also began working with only partly worked boulders. From its place in front of the assembly hall you can see clearly how the school's three blocks enclose the yard.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Baugruppe Schulhaus Wankdorf · Wikipedia (de): Mariann Grunder · Kunst und Stein 04/2016 (marmo.ch): Nachruf Mariann Grunder – Raum und Zeit · Hanna Gagel: Laudatio Peccia 2007 (marmo.ch) · Kunsthaus Zürich, digiLab: Bruno Meier / Mariann Grunder 1967