FAR AWAY and yet NEAR - Exhibition at the Kunsthaus Interlaken

Marguerite Burnat-Provins spent her entire life traveling, from Arras to Lake Geneva, from Valais to Graubünden, almost everywhere in Europe, the Middle East and even South America.

Clara von Rappard traveled Europe, from Italy to Germany, from Austria to Turkey, from Hungary to Greece.

Now, in the summer of 2026, the two artists and their works will meet for the first time at the Kunsthaus Interlaken.

Even if at first glance the work of the two women bears little resemblance, there are some similarities: Their artistic careers, their personal lives and their relationships with their surroundings, a certain existential loneliness, a preference for introspection, an aesthetic characterized by symbolism and a fin-de-siècle sensibility.

Writer and artist, heritage activist, speaker and teacher, Burnat-Provins (like Clara von Rappard) initially drew her inspiration from nature before allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the creatures that sprang from her imagination. Both women came from wealthy families and were trained at an early age in drawing and, in Clara's case, sculpture. Numerous sketches, which represent indispensable milestones in their academic training, bear witness to this.

Von Rappard left her native Bern and learned her craft not only in Italy, as was the tradition in the 19th century, but also in Germany.

Burnat-Provins left the plains of Artois to study in Paris. Here she met her husband, a native of Vevey, who was studying architecture there.

From a very young age, both artists were represented at exhibitions abroad and were honored with awards (Clara with a gold medal at the German Exhibition in London in 1892 and Marguerite with an honorary diploma at the International Exhibition in Antwerp in 1904).

After their deaths, both were unjustly forgotten. One of the main reasons for this is the difficult situation in which female artists generally found themselves at the time.

Von Rappard initially distinguished herself as a portraitist and landscape painter between Realism and Naturalism (with a touch of Impressionism). She later turned increasingly to symbolist themes.

Burnat-Provins, who, like her fellow artist, enjoyed a solid classical education in all genres, initially asserted herself in applied art. In the style of the proponents of Art Nouveau (such as Grasset or Mucha), she translated plant motifs into a decorative vocabulary.

After the ringing of the alarm bells announcing the mobilization for the First World War in 1914, Burnat-Provins was struck by hallucinations, which accompanied her until her death in 1952: Hundreds of imaginary figures appeared in her mind, a surrogate family that she captured in numerous portraits from then on, parallel to her writing activities.

At a time when the reproduction of works of art was booming in Europe, both artists also worked on book illustrations: the French-Swiss with her Petits Tableaux valaisans, the Bernese with illustrations for her own and other literary texts (Vreneli).

Music plays a prominent role for both women. While von Rappard plays the piano and befriends Clara Schumann, Burnat-Provins, also a pianist, reveals an undeniable musical education and sees her poetic prose set to music by various composers.

They also shared a life marked by physical and mental health problems and the fate of childlessness.

Clara von Rappard died in 1912, much younger than Marguerite Burnat-Provins, as a result of a long illness.

The art lover of 2026 can be grateful to the Kunsthaus Interlaken for bringing together in this exhibition two artists whose existences are characterized by both a tragic dimension and a certain genius.

Anne Murray Robertson, art historian

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.