Three Angle Figures

History of the work

At the university’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution at Baltzerstrasse 6 stand three figures of black-patinated bronze. The city's register lists them as “Drei Winkel-Figuren” (Three Angle Figures) by Giro Annen and gives two dates, 1999 and 2016. On Wikimedia Commons the group is labelled “Gruppe von 3 Figuren” (Group of three figures) with the year 2016. The accessible sources do not explain how the two dates relate to each other.

Giro Annen, whose civil name is Gerhard Annen, was born in Chur on 17 June 1957. According to the Swiss art lexicon SIKART he trained as a photographer and cameraman from 1975 to 1981; he has lived in Bern since 1979 and worked as an independent artist since 1983. The Bündner Kunstmuseum notes that he has photographed the same waterfall again and again since the mid-1970s and that from the mid-1980s he turned mainly to sculpture.

He had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1992, the Kunstmuseum Bern in 1998 and the Kunsthaus Langenthal in 2006/07, among others. In 1993 and 1994 he received the Federal Art Scholarship, and in 1994 the newly created award of the City of Bern's art commission and a studio stay in Paris. In 2014 the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur showed photographs, a slide projection and three concrete sculptures.

SIKART describes Annen as an artist who commits neither to one style nor to a few materials and who rarely explains his work. According to that text his sculptures always relate in size to the human body; he later had kneaded clay pieces cast in bronze or iron as well. His works are held by the Kunstmuseum Bern and by the collections of the city and canton of Bern. On site it is worth looking at the three figures from different sides and comparing their size with your own.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · SIKART: Giro Annen (Marco Obrist) · Wikipedia (de): Giro Annen · Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur: Giro Annen (2014) · Wikimedia Commons: Bronzeplastik Gruppe von 3 Figuren (Giro Annen 2016)