Loaraden

History of the work

In the sculpture park of the Zentrum Paul Klee at Monument im Fruchtland 3 stands “Loaraden”, a sculpture of forged steel by Oscar Wiggli. The city's register dates it to 1992 to 1996; Wikimedia Commons gives the year as 1993. According to the exhibition list of the Oscar and Janine Wiggli Foundation, the sculptures “Loaraden”, “Canrac” and “Elnac” were shown in 2005 in the Martha Müller sculpture park at the Zentrum Paul Klee, the year the museum opened.

The Zentrum Paul Klee, built to designs by Renzo Piano, opened on 20 June 2005. It was founded by the surgeon Maurice Edmond Müller; the park bears the name of Martha Müller.

Oscar Wiggli was born in Olten on 9 March 1927. After an apprenticeship as a mechanic from 1946 to 1949 he went to Paris in 1951 for two years at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. From 1956 he worked in two studios, one in Montrouge just outside Paris and one in Muriaux in the Jura. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland the abstracted figure was his subject; from the 1950s he was internationally known as an iron sculptor, later adding experimental photography and, from the 1980s, electroacoustic music. With his wife Janine he built his own synthesiser in 1982. He died in Delémont on 26 January 2016.

According to the foundation, Wiggli expanded his skills in professional forges from 1968 to 1976, and in 1987 his first large sculptures were made in an industrial forge. In the 2007 catalogue “Körper Raum Klang”, Matthias Frehner distinguishes three stages; in the last, he writes, work with monumental forging hammers produced archaic idols that embody human existence as such. Walking around “Loaraden”, you see steel that was shaped under the hammer rather than welded together.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Fondation Oscar et Janine Wiggli: Ausstellungen · Fondation Oscar et Janine Wiggli: Der Bildhauer · Fondation Oscar et Janine Wiggli: Biografie · HLS: Wiggli, Oscar · Wikipedia (de): Oscar Wiggli · Wikipedia (de): Zentrum Paul Klee · Wikimedia Commons: Stahlplastik Loaraden (Oscar Wiggli 1993)