Lorraine Ring

History of the work

On the lawn in front of the gibb vocational school on Lorrainestrasse lies a ring of cast concrete. The artist Vaclav Pozarek made it in 1980 and called it 'Lorraine-Ring'; the city's register gives the materials as cast concrete and lawn. The available sources do not state its dimensions or who commissioned it.

The site is architecturally important. The school was built from 1937 to 1939 as a trade school; the design came out of a competition held in 1935 with eighty entrants. The plans bear the signature of the Bernese architect Hans Brechbühler, though the building inventory considers it possible that the design was by his young assistant Max Jenni. The long building on pillars with its strict facade grid counts, together with the SUVA building, as a pioneering work of modern architecture (Neues Bauen) in Bern and has been under federal protection since 2005. A green area with trees separates the school from Lorrainestrasse, and the Lorraine bridge, built in 1930, starts at the bridgehead.

Pozarek was born in České Budějovice (Budweis) on 18 September 1940. He studied film directing at the Prague film academy in 1965 and 1966 and left Czechoslovakia in 1968; according to SIKART it was mainly the concrete art of Richard Paul Lohse that drew him to Switzerland. After studies in Hamburg and, from 1971 to 1973, with Anthony Caro at London's St Martin's School of Art, he settled in Bern. From 1994 to 2005 he taught at the Bern University of the Arts; solo exhibitions were held at the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur and the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, among others.

SIKART describes his sculpture as base-less and shaped by Minimal Art, using industrial materials worked with craftsmanlike precision. The same grounds also hold an iron sculpture by Bernhard Luginbühl, the 'C-Figur'; a walk around the school links the two works.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Lorrainestrasse 1, 1A (Gewerbeschule) · SIKART: Vaclav Pozarek (Hans Rudolf Reust) · Wikimedia Commons: Betonplastik Lorraine Ring (Václav Požárek 1980)