Group of Girls

History of the work

In front of the Kirchenfeld grammar school at Kirchenfeldstrasse 25 stand two bronze figure groups by Karl Geiser; one of them is the 'Mädchengruppe' (Group of Girls). In 1926 the school moved into its new building in the Kirchenfeld district, and that same year Geiser won the competition for two sculptures in front of it (Wikipedia). Only on 8 April 1938, twelve years after the commission, were the girls' group and the boys' group inaugurated.

The long delay had to do with Geiser's way of working. Wikipedia describes a pronounced perfectionism that often held up his projects for years; SIKART speaks of protracted work that tormented him. The girls' group was cast in 1937 and that same year placed in front of the Swiss pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. According to SIKART, Geiser was no longer satisfied by then: his concept of the figure from the 1920s no longer convinced him, and the HLS notes that by the time they were set up he could no longer identify with the two groups.

Geiser was born in Bern on 22 November 1898 and was self-taught as an artist; after his school-leaving exam at the Literargymnasium, which today forms part of the Kirchenfeld grammar school, he took his first studio in 1918. At the end of 1922 he moved to Zurich. Heads and figures of boys became his first main subject; Georg Reinhart from Winterthur supported him as a patron. Geiser died in Zurich at the end of March 1957 (HLS).

The work on the Bern groups also produced a striding youth that did not fit into the ensemble. Geiser kept the plaster until his death; in 1958 the City of Zurich acquired a bronze cast from his estate, which now stands in the park of the Muraltengut. In front of the school, it is worth comparing the two groups, on which Geiser worked for twelve years.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Wikipedia (de): Karl Geiser · SIKART: Karl Geiser · HLS: Karl Geiser · Wikipedia (de): Gymnasium Kirchenfeld · Stadt Zürich, Kunst und Bau: Schreitender Jüngling (Karl Geiser) · Wikimedia Commons: Bronzeplastik Mädchengruppe (Karl Geiser 1937)