The Four Seasons

History of the work

At the far right of the street front of the office building at Länggassstrasse 37, next to the finely divided window of the staircase, a tall rectangular mural runs over several storeys. Heinrich Danioth made 'Die vier Jahreszeiten' (The Four Seasons) in 1949. Wikidata gives its size as 15.6 metres high and 5.7 metres wide and lists the four seasons, people, animals and fruit as its subjects. The city's data describe the technique as painted sgraffito, while the text of the building inventory calls it a fresco.

The building was put up in 1946 and 1947 for the Federal Alcohol Administration, with a local post office on the ground floor. In 1986 the Alcohol Administration invited proposals for an extension, won by the Bern architect Rolf Mühlethaler. In the early 1990s he lengthened the building on both sides; a chemistry building of 1894 and a house of 1899 were demolished for this. The building inventory counts the result among the most convincing Bern buildings of those years. According to Wikidata the building now belongs to Swiss Post.

Danioth, born in Altdorf in 1896, began his training in 1912 with the Basel painter Rudolf Löw and in 1925 went to Karlsruhe as a master student of August Babberger. He later settled in Flüelen, in 1931 according to SIKART and the HLS, as early as 1929 according to Wikipedia. He made large murals, for example at the Tellspielhaus in Altdorf (1927) and the controversial 'Fundamentum' on the archive of the Federal Charters in Schwyz (1935–1936), and in 1950 he painted the devil on the rock face above the Devil's Bridge. For fifteen years he drew for the satirical magazine 'Nebelspalter'. All his life he resisted the label of a 'Heimatmaler', a painter of homeland scenes. He died in Flüelen in 1953.

The Bern picture is therefore one of his late works. Looking up from Länggassstrasse, you can search the narrow, tall panel for the four seasons and for the animals and fruit that Wikidata lists among its subjects.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Länggassstrasse 35, 37 (PDF) · Wikidata: Die vier Jahreszeiten (Q66363644) · SIKART: Heinrich Danioth (Beat Stutzer) · HLS: Danioth, Heinrich (Tapan Bhattacharya) · Wikipedia (de): Heinrich Danioth · Wikimedia Commons: Sgraffito Die vier Jahreszeiten (Heinrich Danioth 1949)