The Swiss Connection: Cuno Amiet
Girl in Flowers (Mädchen in Blumen), 1896
Oil on canvas
50 × 60 cm
Private collection

In 1896, Cuno Amiet painted Girl in Flowers (Mädchen in Blumen), a canvas that radiates freshness and quiet lyricism. The subject—a young girl immersed in blossoms—was one he would revisit often, but here the influence of Pont-Aven and the Nabis is especially clear. Amiet had met Paul Sérusier and Émile Bernard in 1892, and their emphasis on pure color, decorative rhythm, and simplified form left a lasting mark. This painting carries those lessons with a gentle confidence, turning the figure into something more symbolic than portrait-like.

The story of the work is enriched by its early owner. Ferdinand Hodler, the towering Swiss painter of the time, admired it so deeply that he wrote to Amiet, calling it the finest piece in the exhibition. Amiet, moved by this praise, gifted the painting to Hodler—a gesture that speaks of respect and of the dialogue between two generations of Swiss modernists.

Amiet himself was born in Solothurn in 1868 and died in Oschwand in 1961, leaving behind a long and varied career. He studied first in Munich, then at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he befriended Giovanni Giacometti. Dissatisfied with academic convention, he joined the Pont-Aven circle in 1892, absorbing its radical approach to color. Returning to Switzerland in 1893, he faced initial indifference—his first exhibition in 1894 was poorly received—but by the early 1900s he had found recognition, even joining the German Expressionist group Die Brücke in 1906.

In 1898, Amiet married Anna Luder von Hellsau, and together they made Oschwand a cultural meeting place for artists and writers. Despite the devastating loss of more than 400 works in the 1931 Glaspalast fire in Munich, Amiet continued to paint and teach, shaping the course of Swiss modernism. His art is remembered for its radiant harmonies and recurring themes: gardens, harvests, winter landscapes, and figures absorbed in nature.

Visually, Girl in Flowers is striking for its luminous fields of color and the decorative flattening of space. The girl seems less an individual than a symbol, woven into the rhythm of blossoms and background. This chromatic lyricism anticipates Amiet’s later garden and harvest scenes, where color itself becomes the true subject.

More than a youthful experiment, the painting embodies Amiet’s embrace of international avant-garde currents while remaining rooted in Swiss sensibility. Its journey into Hodler’s collection underscores its importance as a bridge between two innovators, and its freshness still speaks today of the lyrical modernism that defined Amiet’s long career.