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About the author
Iris Bruderer-Oswald PhD grew up in the Netherlands and Switzerland. She studied art history, German studies and Dutch studies at the University of Zurich. She completed her doctorate under Gottfried Boehm at the University of Basel on the Swiss-American expressionist Hugo Weber, ‘Vision in Flux’. She received a three-year research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Bern, and the German Centre for Art History, Paris, for the project ‘Carola Giedion-Welcker and the Language of Modernism’. For many years she has lectured in New Art History at various institutions, with research stays in the USA, France and Germany. She has also given talks and published essays on 20th-century art including Wilhelm Worringer, Max Ernst, Sigismund Righini, and Oskar Kokoschka. She was a correspondent for the press and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) radio, and is member of the board of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. She is presently working on a scientific biography of the Hubert Looser collection in Zurich.
Summary
Wilhelm Wartmann was the first Director of the Kunsthaus Zürich and managed its fortunes for forty years between 1909 and 1949. During this period, he opened the museum to international and contemporary art and drove the development of its unique collection of modern art. Throughout his career, he managed to construct a Europe-wide network of relationships with art enthusiasts, collectors, art historians and artists such as Edvard Munch, Ferdinand Hodler, Oskar Kokoschka and many others. He followed their artistic development with great empathy, seeking out the inner sound of their works. In doing so, he layed the foundation for the Kunsthaus Zürich’s significance and worldwide fame today. He is rightly considered one of the most influential museum directors in Switzerland. Which other museum director has been portrayed by Edvard Munch und was friends with Oskar Kokoschka?
With the book The Inner Sound of Art: Wilhelm Wartmann and the Kunsthaus Zürich, art historian Iris Bruderer-Oswald PhD presents the first scholarly biography of Wilhelm Wartmann. She opens a new chapter in Zurich’s cultural history, one that radiates far into the European art world.
