Eva Aeppli
6 June – 1 November 2015
Eva Aeppli, born on May 2, 1925 in Zofingen (Switzerland), grew up in Basel with her parents and three siblings. She attended the Steiner School in Basel, which had been co-founded by her father. During the 2nd World War she enrolled in courses at the School of Applied Arts and created her first fabric figures, glove puppets which she sold in various stores. She only commenced her actual artistic oeuvre – she considered the glove puppets her bread-and-butter work – once she was in Paris.
Aeppli met Yves Klein, François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, along with protagonists of the very lively Parisian art world such as the gallery owner Iris Clert, the critic Pierre Restany, or the young Swedish art historian Pontus Hultén. However, for the most part she kept her distance from the art scene, while her husband fully immersed himself in it. In 1955 she met Niki de Saint Phalle and the latter’s husband Harry Matthews; the two couples were subsequently bound by a close friendship.
In 1960 Aeppli separated from Tinguely, who lived in the ensuing years with Niki de Saint Phalle, and went on to marry American lawyer Samuel Mercer, with whom she lived part-time in Omaha/NE.
The mid-1960s saw the creation of the first textile sculptures, life-sized figures with impressive faces and long, thin hands. La Table of 1967 (now at Moderna Museet Stockholm) shows 13 figures, sitting at a table, an interpretation of the Last Supper, without a Savior, though. On a smaller scale and darker is the group of likewise 13 figures bearing the title Hommage à Amnesty International (now at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), black-clad forms whose faces are petrified in silent suffering. Furthermore, Eva Aeppli created individual figures which, sitting on chairs, function as silent watchers of the world. An intensive confrontation with astrology, which began from 1975 in collaboration with astro-psychoanalyst Jacques Berthon and artist Eric Leraille, led to the creation of various groups of figures, the first of which was the Die zehn Planeten (The Ten Planets), which were shown in 1976 at the Biennale in Venice. After the Biennale the artist decided to have the heads of the Planets cast in bronze. She gifted the hands to friends; the figures’ bodies were destroyed.
A final group of works was created in 1990 and 1991: these are sculptures that she created jointly with Jean Tinguely, morbid figures such as the Hommage à Käthe Kollwitz (Kunstmuseum Solothurn) or Erika (private collection). These sculptures were on show at Basel’s Galerie Littmann and were central components of the subsequent retrospectives. Eva Aeppli collaborated with other artists, too, such as Jean-Pierre Raynaud or Daniel Spoerri.
In 2006 Museum Tinguely exhibited Les Livres de Vie (The Books of Life), 15 volumes which Eva Aeppli created from 1954 onward and in which she glued everything that seemed important to her. These are invitations to exhibitions, photos of friends, letters, tickets, drawings, little notes, and large documents of all kinds, including draft wills. Les Livres de Vie form a golden thread through an artist’s life that was otherwise characterized by constant change. Eva Aeppli had donated the books to Kunstmuseum Solothurn in 2002. All of the artist’s bronze heads were also on show at Museum Tinguely in 2008, donated to the Museum by her brother Christoph. The last major exhibition was organized for Eva Aeppli by her friend Daniel Spoerri, at his exhibition venue in Hadersdorf in Lower Austria. This marked the completion of a circle that told of a lifelong friendship.
Supported by a more recent – but no less close – friendship, the electronic directory of Eva Aeppli’s works is produced by researcher Susanne Gyger in collaboration with the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA). It has been published on the latter’s website since 2012 and is publicly accessible.