Trojan Horse

History of the work

In the upper, western playground of the Hochfeld school at Hochfeldstrasse 40–50 stands a horse of bronze. Pierre Siebold made the “Trojanisches Pferd” (Trojan Horse) between 1960 and 1963; Wikimedia Commons gives the year 1963 and shows the school building at Hochfeldstrasse 42 in the background.

According to a biography by the Geneva gallery Latham, Siebold won the City of Bern's art prize in 1960 with exactly this project, a bronze Trojan horse for the Hochfeld school, on which he worked for three years. This fits the date of 1960 to 1963 in the city's register. He had already received the Bern art prize once before, in 1947.

Peter Siebold, who also called himself Pierre, was born in Brussels on 28 March 1925 and held citizenship of Rohrbach in the canton of Bern. He attended the school of applied arts in Bern and then in Zurich, settled in Geneva in 1945 and specialised there as an art blacksmith. In 1947 he worked in Paris in the studio of Ossip Zadkine. From 1956 he had a workshop for metal sculpture in Versoix. SIKART describes him as a sculptor who worked in iron and bronze and made mosaics.

Numerous public works by him can be seen in Geneva, according to the gallery for instance “La belle de Champel” of 1959, a tuba player in the Parc Saint-Jean of 1963 and a chess set of fourteen painted iron figures at the École des Grottes from 1985 to 1987. In 2015 Versoix devoted a retrospective to him; Siebold had died in Geneva in 2012. Only a few hundred metres from the school, his iron sculpture “Arche” of 1968 hangs on the façade of the Lindenhof hospital. Walking around the horse in the playground, you can view it with the school building behind it, as in the photo on Commons.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Galerie Latham (anticstore): Pierre Siebold (1925-2012) · Wikipedia (de): Peter Siebold (Künstler) · SIKART: Pierre Siebold (Kurzeintrag) · Wikimedia Commons: Bronzeplastik Trojanisches Pferd (Pierre (Peter) Siebold 1963)