Alois Carigiet

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Alois Carigiet (August 30, 1902 – August 1, 1985) was a Swiss graphic designer, painter, and illustrator. His most famous work includes a series of six illustrated children's books on alpine themes. In 1966 he was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration. He was the older brother of actor and comedian Zarli Carigiet.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and education in Graubünden (1902 – 1923)

Alois Carigiet was the seventh of eleven children born to Alois Carigiet and Barbara Maria Carigiet, née Lombriser, a farmer’s family from Trun in the canton of Graubünden, where he grew up and spent his first school years. In 1911 his family moved to the canton’s capital Chur where his father had accepted employment. This relocation into a more urban environment had a strong impact on the nine-year old; in retrospect, Carigiet described the move as an “emigration to the low-lands”, from a “mountain boy’s paradise” to a “gloomy apartment on the ground floor in a narrow town alley”.[1]

Carigiet visited primary and secondary schools in Chur, as well as the "Kantonsschule", the canton’s gymnasium, which he quit in 1918 in order to start an apprenticeship as a decorative designer and draftsman with master painter Martin Räth. While learning the art of graining, marbleizing, gold plating and other techniques of decorative art in Räth's atelier, Carigiet spent a lot of his spare time filling volumes of sketchbooks with drawings of rural and urban scenes, farm animals and pets, anatomical studies of the heads and beaks of birds exhibited at Chur’s natural history museum, as well as with numerous caricatures of his acquaintances and family. Räth noticed the apprentice’s talent as well, and one of Carigiet’s appointed creations, an assembly of decorated vases for the company Siebler & Co.’s shop windows, seems to have received particular appreciation. Carigiet finished his apprenticeship in 1923, with the highest grade in every subject.[2]

[edit] Graphic design in Zurich (1923 – 1939)

After having completed his apprenticeship, Carigiet sought work in Zurich and started a job as a practical trainee with Max Dalang’s advertisement agency in 1923, where he soon learned the techniques of graphic design and was hired as a regular employee. After having won several competitions and having gained a reputation, Carigiet opened his own graphic atelier in Zurich in 1927, employing up to six people at times, due to the constantly large volume of orders his business received. Carigiet created numerous commercial and political advertisement posters, festive decorations, educational posters and murals for schools, illustrations and satirical caricatures for the print media, as well magazine covers for periodicals such as Schweizer Spiegel and SBB-Revue.[3] Important work in the 1930s included a diorama for the Swiss Pavilion at the Paris International world fair in 1937, and set designs, murals and the official posters for the "Landi", the Swiss national exposition held in Zurich in 1939.[4]

[edit] Artistic development

In the early 1930s Carigiet traveled to Paris, Munich, Vienna, and Salzburg where he became acquainted with the art movement Neue Sachlichkeit, as reflected in painted scenes of Paris in ’Das rote Haus am Montmartre (watercolor) and of Ascona in Haus und Garten in Ascona (oil painting on cardboard), both created in 1935. Contemporary expressionism had an influence on his work as well, including his commercial artwork: For example, the display of red horses and a green cow on posters for the OLMA, Switzerland’s annual national agricultural fair, in 1946 and 1952 received acclaim from art critics and questions from more conservative farmers, to which he succinctly replied that the cow was green because it had eaten grass. Carigiet’s paintings increasingly depicted everyday motifs from his home canton Graubünden and occasionally Zurich, but also from further trips to France, Spain, and Lapland in the mid 1930s.[5]

Carigiet always held a keen interest in the theatre, and had already worked in costume design in the late 1920s. With the help of art critic Jakob Rudolf Welti, he was commissioned as costume and stage designer for the Stadttheater Zürich’s performance of La belle Hélène in an adaptation by Max Werner Lenz, and created design work for three other programs at the Stadttheater as well. Carigiet was one of the founding members of the influential Cabaret Cornichon, a satirical cabaret program staged in the restaurant "zum Hirschen" in Zurich which would become one of the most significant political cabarets of German-speaking Switzerland during Germany’s Nazi regime. Between 1935 and 1946 he created often parodistic costume and set designs for ten of the Cornichon’s programs, including a heavily decorated barrel organ used by his brother Zarli who was also a member of the Cabaret’s ensemble.[6]

[edit] Platenga (1939 – 1950)

While spending a holiday in Trun in May 1939, Carigiet hiked to "Platenga", a hamlet on one of the terraces in the community of Obersaxen, where, in his own words, he was immediately fascinated by the landscape's vastness and untouchedness and the feeling of a newly found, long lost paradise. [7]He gave up his business in Zurich, and, in October 1939, rented a small farm house without electricity or running water, the "Hüs am Bach" ("house at the stream") in Platenga. Carigiet wished to dedicate his life to art and observation, spending hours a day, equipped with a pair of binoculars and a sketch book, tracking down the alpine fauna.[8]

On April 20, 1943, Carigiet married Berta Carolina Müller (1911 – 1980) an art student from Halle whom he had met in Germany. After their first daughter was born in 1944, they bought land near Platenga’s chapel. In 1945 Carigiet designed plans for a larger house which was built in 1946. In 1947, the second daughter was born in the new house, called "Im Sunnefang". Mainly for the sake of the girls’ education, the family moved back to Zurich in 1950, where Carigiet took up his work as a graphic designer again, while also continuing his artistic pursuits.[9]

[edit] Children’s books

In 1940, Carigiet was approached by the Romansh speaking author Selina Chönz who asked him to illustrate her story Uorsin and publish it as a children’s picture book. After several years of hesitating, Carigiet finally agreed, and spent several weeks sketching the scenery and architecture in Guarda, a village in the Lower Engadin, after which he modeled the protagonist’s village. In 1945 the book was published in German as Uorsin (Schellen-Ursli. Ein Engadiner Bilderbuch). The story follows a boy’s perilous climb through snow to an abandoned summer hut in order to retrieve a large trychel for the annual Chalandamarz celebrations on March 1st. The English title is A Bell for Ursli; the book has been translated into ten languages with total sales estimated around 1.7 million worldwide.[10]

Carigiet and Chönz continued their series of alpine children’s books after "Schellen-Ursli" with two titles focusing on Ursli’s younger sister: Flurina (Flurina und das Wildvögelein. Schellen-Ursli’s Schwester) in 1952 (English title: Florina and the Wild Bird) and La naivera (Der grosse Schnee) in 1957 (The Snowstorm). In the 1960s, Carigiet continued on his own, illustrating and writing Zottel, Zick und Zwerg. Eine Geschichte von drei Geissen in 1965 (Anton the Goatherd), Birnbaum, Birke, Berberitze. Eine Geschichte aus den Bündner Bergen in 1967 (The Pear Tree, the Birch Tree and the Barberry Bush), and Maurus und Madleina. Über den Berg in die Stadt in 1969 (Anton and Anne). In 1966, Carigiet received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his lasting contribution to children’s literature, making him the first recipient of the award for illustration. The same year, he was awarded the Schweizer Jugendbuchpreis (Swiss youth book prize) for Zottel, Zick und Zwerg.[11]

[edit] Later life (1960 – 1985)

In 1960, Carigiet moved back to Trun, the village where he had been born. He dedicated the rest of his life to painting, and frequently exhibited his artwork in Switzerland, but also in Germany and Canada, among other countries. Alois Carigiet died on August 1, 1985 in Trun.[12]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Beat Stutzer. Carigiet. Die frühen Jahre. 8-54, 2002: AS Verlag & Buchkonzept AG, Zürich und München - ISBN 3-905111-73-X, p 8
  2. ^ Stutzer, pp 8-9
  3. ^ Stutzer, p 10-13
  4. ^ Stutzer, p 20
  5. ^ Stutzer, pp 18-19
  6. ^ Stutzer, pp 14-15
  7. ^ Stutzer, p 22
  8. ^ Stutzer, pp 24-25
  9. ^ Stutzer, pp 25-31
  10. ^ Stutzer, p 32 - 34
  11. ^ Stutzer, pp 32-34
  12. ^ Stutzer, pp 50-52

[edit] References

Beat Stutzer. Carigiet. Die frühen Jahre. 8-54, 2002: AS Verlag & Buchkonzept AG, Zürich und München - ISBN 3-905111-73-X

[edit] External links

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