Verzasca

History of the work

In the playground of the Fellerstock school at Abendstrasse 37 stands a sculpture of granite from the Verzasca valley. According to the City of Bern's records it is called 'Verzasca' and was made in 1969 – so the title names where the stone comes from. Wikimedia Commons describes the same sculpture with the date 1975; which date is correct could not be established.

Here the sculptor was also a planner. The school belongs to the Fellergut estate, which according to an art walk through Bümpliz based on city material was planned between 1969 and 1977 by a group of three architects, one of whom was Hans Fischli. German Wikipedia lists the Fellergut among Fischli's works with the dates 1968 to 1978.

Fischli was born in Zurich in 1909 and trained there as an architectural draughtsman. In 1928/29 he studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he met Max Bill. He ran his own architectural practice from 1933 to 1976; alongside it he painted and drew, and from 1933 to 1936 he belonged to the Paris artists' group Abstraction-Création. From 1954 to 1961 he directed the school and museum of applied arts in Zurich. He died in Bern in 1989.

According to the artists' lexicon SIKART he came to sculpture through Hans Aeschbacher, whom he met in 1940; Wikipedia gives 1944 as the start of his work in stone. He worked blocks of sandstone, granite and marble and largely left them in their original shape. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes his aim in sculpture as combining organic and geometric form.

Standing in front of the sculpture you can test exactly that: how much of the raw block remains and where Fischli intervened. The housing blocks around it come from the same planning as the school.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Geocaching GCARD01: Kunstspaziergang Bümpliz (Kurzfassung eines Kunstspaziergangs der Stadt Bern) · SIKART: Hans Fischli · HLS: Hans Fischli · Wikipedia (de): Hans Fischli · Wikimedia Commons: Granitskulptur Verzasca (Hans Fischli 1975)