Peter Stein
Born in 1922.
Died in 2015.
Peter Stein (1922–2015) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He trained in stained glass and the teaching of drawing; from the 1950s onwards, he created, among other works, stained-glass windows for the Saint-Barthélemy Chapel and the grammar school in Burgdorf. He initially earned his living as a drawing teacher.
From the late 1950s onwards, he developed an independent body of work in painting and printmaking.
His first paintings were still figurative, but Stein gradually reduced recognisable and symbolic elements in order to focus his work on colour, space, light and rhythm. The Mobiliar Collection describes his paintings as superimpositions of fluid layers that create densities, intervals and areas of transparency. American Color Field painting, presented in Bern in the 1950s, was among his points of reference.
Nature remained an underlying resonance rather than a represented motif.
Stein represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1980. Important exhibitions were devoted to his work at the Kunsthaus Zug and the Kunsthalle Bern; according to the Kunsthaus Zug, the Kunstmuseum Bern holds his complete body of prints. From his stained-glass windows to his prints and abstract canvases, light remained one of the through-lines of his career.
