IHR camille graeser (Engl.: Yours, Camille Graeser) is a close-up look at the creative process of Swiss avant-garde artist, graphic and interior designer Camille Graeser (1892–1980). The juxtaposed sketches and draft designs—some intimate and subtle, others surprising—offer an insight into his world of ideas and visual practice. Here, we have a concrete experience of the intimate way this work begins.

Between 1925 and 1975, he completed numerous drawings, mainly in colored pencil, chalk, pencil, and ink. The many different paper types (transparent, squared, perforated, torn) in various formats, are inscribed with a wide range of handwritten notes, stamps, or signatures. On the one hand, these are sketched ideas, compositional schemes, studies for paintings, prints, and relief constructions, on the other, designs for everyday objects such as scarves, knitwear, wallpaper, or decorative fabrics. These include several illustrations and technical drawings of furniture and interiors, some of which the trained carpenter designed for his own domestic spaces.

Over the years, Camille Graeser increasingly turned toward the constructivist idiom and concrete forms. Like Max Bill, Fritz Glarner, Verena Loewensberg, Richard Paul Lohse, and earlier, the pioneering Sophie Taeuber-Arp, he belongs to The Zurich School of Concretists. Their style is primarily known for its rigorous pictorial logic, strict lines, and rich primary colors. IHR camille graeser goes beyond our usual image of Graeser as a concrete artist and shows the accessible, intuitive, and spontaneous side of his work – just as Graeser designed, drew, and wrote (i.a., on a postcard from 1934 to German artist Willi Baumeister):

ich entwerfe jetzt ganz neuartige pianinos, coiffeur-läden, grafik und ganz freie  m Ö b E l  für die industrie. ahoi ! ins strandbad küsnacht !

immer IHR alter
camille graeser

(Engl.:  I now design brand new pianos, hairdresser’s salons, graphics, and completely free furniture for the industry. Ahoy! To the lido in Küsnacht! Ever your old Camille Graeser)

Header Image:
Exhibition view, IHR camille graeser, von Bartha, Basel, 2025. Photo: Philipp Hänger / von Bartha