Werner Frei

A perhaps forgotten master from Zollikon Zurich, who died in 1983. His works are of a freshness and radiance that is unrivalled, and it is astonishing how much of his stylistic influence can be found in the works of contemporary artists today. He was a humanist, a philanthropist and someone who is fondly remembered by all who knew him. And, in particular, he was a genial artist whose oeuvre ranges stylistically from impressionistic portraits, landscapes and still lifes, to wild, tachistic abstraction, to a pioneering ‘Concrete Impressionism’ and minimalism. We are proud to present a selection of his best works from five decades.

Born in 1907 in Rickenbach, in the Zürcher Weinland. Self-taught. Life drawing at the Kunstgewerbeschule, ETH and the E. Wehrli painting school in Zurich. Then travelled through Paris and the south of France to inspire his art and create. In the 1940s, still attached to representationalism, he slowly but surely developed freer painting styles. From 1942 he worked as a freelance artist in Zollikerberg. After study trips to Rome, Berlin and London at the end of the 1940s, his works began to mutate. Numerous exhibitions in art spaces and galleries in Switzerland, in 1962 at the Shirokiya Gallery in Tokyo, Japan and art in construction projects for the SBB, among others. The highlight was a retrospective organised by the Kunsthaus Zurich with a focus on his last creative period at the Helmhaus Zurich in 1977.

Frei was born 1907, Rickenbach, CH. Died 1983, Zollikerberg, CH.