Kneeling Youth

History of the work

In section D3 of the Schosshalde cemetery, a bronze by Gustave Piguet sits on a gravestone: the 'Kniender Jüngling' (Kneeling youth) of 1972. The city's register lists it as bronze on a gravestone. It is one of Piguet's late works; the sculptor died four years later, on 12 December 1976. We do not name the person buried here.

Piguet was born in Interlaken in 1909. After training in Bern as a sculptor in wood and stone he worked in Paris and took part in the 1937 World Exhibition; in 1939 he returned to Bern. That is how the short biography on the art portal AskArt summarises it, while the lexicon SIKART briefly describes him as a sculptor for buildings and public space.

The city's heritage inventory records several such works. At the radio studio on Schwarztorstrasse the figurative wall sculptures are his, probably from 1948 according to the inventory. In St Peter's church on Brunnadernstrasse his reliefs on the story of Peter decorate the whole porch, and the pulpit and communion table also bear his reliefs and inscriptions. Above the entrance to the dental clinics on Freiburgstrasse stands a bronze figure of 1954, which the inventory calls Saint George in one place and an ancient Egyptian god of healing in another. For the funeral hall of the Bremgarten cemetery he made capitals and bronze doors.

Besides the 'Kneeling youth', Piguet's 'Mädchen' (Girl) of 1962 also stands in the Schosshalde cemetery. Between the sections you can thus compare two bronzes by the same sculptor made ten years apart. At 16.8 hectares the cemetery is the largest in the city.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Stadt Bern: Kunstwerke im öffentlichen Raum (opendata.swiss) · SIKART: Gustave Piguet · AskArt: Gustave Piguet · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Schwarztorstrasse 21 (Radiostudio) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Brunnadernstrasse 40 (Petruskirche) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Freiburgstrasse 7 (Zahnmedizinische Kliniken) · Stadtgrün Bern: Der Bremgartenfriedhof – Ein Spaziergang mit Geschichten (2023) · Wikipedia (de): Schosshaldenfriedhof · Wikimedia Commons: Foto