Switzerland Naturalism
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.
Karl (Carl) Spitz was an outstanding German landscape painter.
Karl Spitz's paintings, inspired by nature, were characterised by a colourful and expressive style. Specialising in depicting rural scenes, Spitz masterfully recreated the beauty and tranquillity of nature.
His work often reflected the subtlety of light and shadow, as well as the details of his surroundings.
Egon Arnold Alexis Freiherr von Vietinghoff was a German-Swiss painter, author, philosopher and creator of the Egon von Vietinghoff Foundation. He reconstructed the lost painting techniques of the Old Masters, and created some 2,700 paintings.
The immense work of Egon von Vietinghoff includes all classical motifs: flowers, still lifes, landscapes, portraits, nudes, and figural scenes. Due to the large demand, more than half of his total work consists of fruit still lifes. The beholder's normal distance to the picture procures balanced representation and self-contained calm of the object. Without losing himself in details, Vietinghoff leads the eye through the whole spectrum of nuances of color and finds the balance between intensity and gentle peace. Thus, he created the impression of unity and harmonic interaction of object and background, light and shadow, form and color, detail and totality.
