16/02/2025
Part ll ... Sometimes I am asked why I engage in such an ancient technique as fresco painting. Now why you feel attracted to something (...or someone) is difficult to put into words. Why do we fall in love? How does a passion develop?
And yet I believe that two people played an important role in making this “love story” happen for me.
The first is my great-grandfather Karl Francis Alfred de Quervain (1873 - 1964). He was born near Bern and studied from 1892-95 at the Art Academy in Munich, where he trained as a fresco restorer. He died when I was 2 years old... and of course I don't remember him... and yet he has been very present in my life since I was a child. I grew up in the house he had built in Thun. This house tells about him through all of his large murals, drawings and sculptures. Francis loved Italy and spent a few months with his wife in Florence, where he painted “Narciso alla sorgente” by Giovanni Boltraffio in the Uffizi. He visited Orvieto in the '20s where he stayed in the Hotel Posta (which still exists today) near the Duomo . He loved Rapallo and the Cinque Terre.
Now I have a very personal project, instead of dealing with Etruscan, Renaissance or other frescoes, I want to dedicate myself to a fresco made by my great-grandfather. It is located on the facade of our house in Thun and shows a group of birds in Art Nouveau style. I’m going to make three fresco fragments.
It is my attempt to get closer to one of my ancestors to whom I feel connected and whom I would have liked to have known personally...
