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Iron partially enamelled sculptures, dated 70 for the man, 82 for the women. Dated and monogram on the base.
Pierre Siebold (1925-2012) is a Bernese artist (born in Brussels, Belgium), who settled in Geneva in 1945. In 1956 he set up his metal sculpture workshop in Versoix. After training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bern, which he continued in Zurich, he studied at the Beaux-arts in Geneva, where he specialized as an art sculptor-blacksmith (1945-1946). In 1947, he did an internship in Zadkine's workshop at the Académie de La Grande-Chaumière in Paris, then, on his return to Switzerland, he did another internship in the workshop of the famous Swiss ceramist Marcel Noverraz, in Carouge. At the end of his studies, he accumulated artistic prizes: the Art Prize of the city of Bern in 1947, the Federal Grant in 1950 and 1952, the Neumann Prize in 1950 and the Berthoud Grant in 1956... His work was exhibited at the Rath Museum in 1952, alongside those of the Genevan painters Willy Suter (1918-2002) and Hans Ulrich Saas. (1916-1997). In 1960, Pierre Siebold won the City of Berne art prize with a project that took him three years to complete: a bronze “Trojan Horse” for the Berner Hochfeld Schulhaus. A retrospective exhibition was dedicated to him in Versoix in 2015. The city of Geneva is dotted with public commissions signed by him: among these numerous interventions in public space, we can mention the “Guardian of Peace”, on the facade of the Geneva International Center in 1958 (900 kilos for 12 meters high, the largest sculpture in the city at that time!); “La belle de Champel”, rue de Champel (1959); “the Man playing the tuba”, in Parc Saint-Jean, on the Promeneur-Solitaire trail of Nant-de-Cayla (1963); a set of fourteen painted iron game sculptures entitled “Chess Game”, in the École des Grottes (1985-1987). Other important sculptures have been integrated into public spaces and schools in the city of Versoix. An accessible and powerful art, perfectly integrated into urban life, and which stands the test of time...
In various and sometimes more domestic dimensions, the synthetic representation of animals has always attracted Pierre Siebold, concerned with the line and expressive purity of each sculpture, whatever its scale. It was these qualities that earned him the friendship of the jeweler Gilbert Albert, who called him “the goldsmith of iron”, and who regularly exhibited him in the windows of his jewelry store, next to my gallery on rue de La Corraterie. “You bring iron to life, you ennoble it, it becomes a precious metal,” he complimented him. These two Devils in welded iron and enamel that I am bringing to your attention today (in fact a “devil” and a “devil”, which could well be a couple, except that one is dated 1970, and the other 1982), correspond well to the type of works by Siebold that Gilbert Albert was particularly fond of. Full of humor and fantasy (half sexual devils, half insects with shells), great precision in execution, they are also imbued with a certain preciousness, due to the touches of enamel alternately blue (for “the man”) and yellow (for “the woman”), colorful details quite unusual in Siebold's work. It is reported that in the 70s and 80s, he made, each year, a small enameled devil sculpture for the transition to the following year (which explains these dates mentioned on each of them), in order to “exorcise” sorrowful spirits and to be able to start the new year with truculence and love of life. In monumental or in miniature, Siebold's art is always intelligent without ever being intellectual, it is accessible and demanding at the same time, with flawless technical rigor, a perfect synthesis of the know-how of the craftsman and an artistic vision far removed from any academicism.
