Heinz Schwarz
Born in 1920.
Died in 1994.
Heinz Schwarz (Arbon, 2 July 1920 – Satigny, 12 August 1994) was a Swiss sculptor and painter. Born in Thurgau, he grew up in Gerlafingen and Solothurn; the designation “Solothurn artist” used by the Kunstmuseum Solothurn therefore refers to his roots and artistic trajectory, not to his place of birth. After an apprenticeship as a lithographer in Aarau, he settled in Geneva in 1943 and turned to sculpture.
He lived there from the mid-1940s onwards, while maintaining regular ties with Solothurn’s artistic life.
His sculptural work explores the human figure, animals and portraiture. He is particularly known for his bronzes depicting adolescent girls: elongated bodies with slender limbs, whose presence combines fragility and assurance. This vein does not, however, encompass the whole of his practice.
The Kunstmuseum Solothurn holds, among other works, a Torse féminin (1947–1949), an early work with freer modelling and a rough surface, as well as a series of drawings that entered the collection in the 1980s. In Grenchen, Laure (1980), by contrast, exemplifies the delicacy and polished skin of his late figures.
Schwarz also devoted himself to painting at various periods, particularly to landscape. Die Strasse (La rue, 1957), held by the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, received the Calame Prize in 1958. His work is also encountered in Geneva’s public space: Clémentine, modelled in 1974 and cast in bronze in 1975, belongs to the collection of the Fonds d’art contemporain of the City of Geneva (FMAC).
These works demonstrate the breadth of a practice extending from drawing and painting to monumental sculpture, beyond the sole female motif with which his name is often associated.
