Karl Edmund Walser (April 8, 1877, Teufen - September 28, 1943, Bern) was a Swiss painter, stage designer, illustrator, muralist, and artist. He was the older brother, by one year, of the writer Robert Walser, and provided illustrations or cover art for 11 of Robert's books, including his first book Fritz Kocher's Aufsätze (1904). He was a close friend of German expressionist painter Max Beckmann, who strongly influenced his work.

Personal life Karl Walser was born in Teufen, on April 8, 1877, to Adolf Walser and Elisa Marti Walser, who were shopowners and sold items including costume jewelry and toys, and who were part of a growing middle class. They had 8 children including Karl. He grew up in Biel.

In Berlin, Karl became friends with theater stars he worked with, including Gertrud Eysoldt and Tilly Durieux. Susan Bernofsky describes his social and professional life as easy and successful, writing “doors opened magically everywhere he went, women swooned, and the professional elite hastened to welcome him. [He could] sail through a crowded room […], distributing friendly nods, warmly pressing the right hands and never the wrong ones. […] He moved through the streets of Berlin like a charmed prince, never faltering or stalled by self-doubt.” Around 1905, he advised his brother Robert on fashionable clothing and on how to succeed in the art world in Berlin, which may have become grating for Robert, who implied in a letter than the fine clothing was (at least for him) dishonest.

In 1910 he married Hedwig Agnes Czarnetzki Walser (1885-1987), a bookkeeper and seamstress.

He died in Bern, on September 28, 1943. He was buried at the Schosshalden Cemetery in Bern.

Art career He completed an apprenticeship as a decorative artist in Strasbourg and Stuttgart. Most of Walser's earlier works were lost during World War II.

Between 1899 and 1914 he lived in Berlin and became a board member of the Berlin Secession (1903) and later a member of the Deutsche Künstlerbund (German Artists’ Association). Walser was a noted designer and producer stage sets for opera and theatre from 1903 onward. His work was often praised in reviews of the productions and in reviews of collected art volumes, including praise by Hermann Hesse.

While in Berlin, he worked for a top theater director, Max Reinhardt, and designed most of Bruno Cassirer's book covers, including books by Flaubert, Gorky, and Wedekind. Reviews for his work with Reinhardt were rapturous. His work was featured in the journals Das Theater, Kunst und Künstler , and Die Neue Rundschau. He also received commissions for book cover designs and book illustrations. Between 1904 and 1925, Karl illustrated five of his brother Robert Walser's books and designed covers for six others. Correspondence records with the publisher show that (Karl) Walser contributed comprehensively to the design work including paper choice, format, typeface, and the arrangement of illustrations in the text.

Walser took several study trips to Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Japan. Around 1908, publisher Bruno Cassirer sent Karl on a trip to Japan via Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway because Karl had recently experienced the suicide of a former girlfriend. Several of Walser's depictions of Japan are preserved. (See Gallery below.)

He moved residence back to Switzerland from Germany in 1917 and mainly worked on the painterly decoration of public spaces, such as the Amtshaus in Zurich, the Stadttheater in Bern and the Grossratssaal at Bern City Hall. He also completed murals for public buildings and private residences of renowned figures.

In 1942, the Bern council chose Walser's design for a commissioned mural for a new wing at the town hall. The federal president and mayoral figures attended the inauguration. Karl finished the project on a notably short timeline. An article in the Swiss Building Journal that praised his work wrote that the commissioners should have given the artist more time. Walser was in poor health and the project is thought to have hastened his death.

Reception An article in Ruhrorter Zeitung in 1904 wrote about Walser's design for the play Silent Hours by the Danish playwright Soen Lange:

A review of the 1908 "Exhibition of Modern Masters" in Halle was reported on by The Saale-Zeitung (February 17, 1908):

A book critic at the Hannoversche Kurier wrote in 1906 about one of the Robert and Karl collaboration books:

In 1912 Bruno Cassirer published a book Das Theater which collected many of Walser's stage designs and costumes. Hermann Hesse, who hadn't seen any of the related theater productions in person, wrote about the book:

Re-prints and publications Walser's series of illustration's for his brother Robert Walser's set of school essays by a fictional child, "Fritz Kocher's Essays", originally published in 1904, are re-printed in the 2013 English translation collection A Schoolboy's Diary. Several of Karl Walser illustrations are published on the New York Review's online story pages for the Robert Walser collection Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories (2016).

Cover Art Walser's painting of Robert dressed as a Schiller character was used for the 2000 English language release of The Robber published by the University of Nebraska Press. His illustrations were also used for the cover art several modern English-language publications of Robert's work, including the New York Review Books versions of Jakob von Gunten, A Schoolboy's Diary, and Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories.

Gallery Selected works

Etchings From Fritz Kocher's Essays These etchings and illustrations were published in Robert Walser's book Fritz Kocher's Essays in 1904.

Other

Stage designs

Book covert art and illustrations

Footnotes

References

External links