A local artist and it's colourful works
While visiting many museums in Switzerland, I had one observation: Swiss museums are proud of their local artist. Thus, it was not a surprise to find quite a well-known artist in the Kunstmuseum Solothurn until the end of April 2023: Roman Candio.
Roman Candio is an artist born in Fulenbach in the canton of Solothurn, after quite a classical childhood he decided to enroll into art lessons with the painter and color theorist Jakob Weder in Langenthal. At the time he was still looking for his final job and he decided to attend the teacher training college in Solothurn and worked as a primary school teacher for three years until 1955. During his three years with childrens, from all ages, he thought about coming back to paintings and drawings. And in 1958 he decided to pursue a career as an artist.
To do so, he attended the classes of Werner Andermatt at the Lucerne School of Applied Arts during a year (1958-1959) and later he was a student of Georg Meistermann at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf (1959-1960).
It's at that time that he helped the church painter Ferdinand Gehr with the execution of large walls and ceiling paintings, which he will later be famous for all over Solothurn and Switzerland. Since this apprenticeship, Candio have two different practices, the one in his studio paintings and drawings with oil, acrylic or even gouache and his works in public space (more or less 50 works) which have ensured the artist's fame and recognition in large parts of Switzerland.
In 1991, he received the Art Prize of the Canton of Solothurn for his paintings and for his work in the field of art in architecture.
Influence by Pop Art and colour theory
In most of the works presented in the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, three important worlds came to my mind: colours, Pop Art and shapes. In his earliest works made during his studies, Candio use fields of colour, dots or geometric shapes in sober black, white and warm grey.
But after his studies, his style changed completely. He decided to explore the technique of collage with magazine and newspaper illustrations, but he completely stopped when he started to copy the composition of photographs of the magazines with paintings, in the style of the American artist Tom Wesselmann.
He changed again when he decided to focus on the motif of the flowers and the landscape in the 70s.
Beside those phases, he created murals, colored glazing, painted bas-reliefs and textiles, weaving, textile collages and – more rarely – three-dimensional works.
The exhibition catalog
The exhibition of the Kunstmuseum Solothurn is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue published the Swiss publisher Scheidegger & Spiess. It features essays and collaborations by Roswitha Schild, Bruno Frangi, Heinrich Breiter and Sibylle Zambon. The photos of the publications we're made by Heinrich Breiter.
ISBN: 978-3-03942-105-3
Price: CHF 59
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Kunstmuseum Solothurn
Date: 22.1.2023 – 30.4.2023
Curators: Roman Candio and Roswitha Schild
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Kunstmuseum Solothurn
Kunstmuseum Solothurn
Werkhofstrasse 30
CH-4500 Solothurn
Phone: +41 32 626 93 80
Mail: kunstmuseum@solothurn.ch