Rolf Dürig
Born in 1926.
Died in 1985.
The SIK-ISEA repertory lists him as a painter, also active in printmaking, illustration, poster design and ceramics. This diversity is not simply a division between fine art and commissioned work: it sheds light on a way of constructing images that are immediately legible without relinquishing their painterly intensity.
The inventory of the Swiss Confederation’s Art Collections makes it possible to trace several directions in his work. A painting from 1954 bears the title *Forêt tropicale* (*Tropischer Urwald*); others evoke rubber exploitation, oriental trees or a peach plantation. These subjects are joined by the peonies in a 1976 canvas and the Gotthard line near Wassen, painted around 1958.
The drawings entitled *Pennafort (Provence)* (1960) and *Chilaw (Ceylan)* (1963) also inscribe named places within this corpus. From luxuriant vegetation to railway infrastructure, the choice of motifs reveals a gaze drawn to landscapes, travel and images from elsewhere; the titles alone, however, do not indicate how these works were made.
Dürig’s career unfolded in Swiss exhibition venues: the Kunstmuseum Luzern presented him from 23 May to 4 June 1954 together with Max Weiss and Erich Müller. His activity as a poster designer can be seen in *Ferienplan – Ferienbahn – SBB*, a poster for the Swiss Federal Railways mentioned in a 1965 design journal held by the heritage platform e-periodica. Between forest, flowers, railway and an invitation to travel, his work sets subjects in motion from one painting to another and from one medium to another.
Public collections thus preserve the trace of an artist for whom the image could inhabit the canvas just as readily as everyday space.
