3813 - MÜLLER, ALBERT (Basel 1897 – 1926 Obino): "The Green Valley"

MÜLLER, ALBERT (Basel 1897 – 1926 Obino): "The Green Valley" Oil on canvas Stamped "Estate" on the reverse and titled 80.5 x 115 cm, framed On the reverse: scene with two figures. Provenance: Sotheby’s, Zurich, December 3, 2007, Lot No. 159; private collection, Switzerland. Exhibition: *Ipotesi Helvetia: un certo espressionismo*, Pinacoteca comunale Casa Rusca, Locarno, March 10–May 20, 1991 (label on the reverse). Bibliography: Beat Stutzer, Albert Müller (1897–1926) and the Basel Artists’ Group Rot-Blau, Basel 1981, pp. 146 and 241 (with illustration), no. G.125. Despite having spent only a few years as a painter and glass artist, Albert Müller, who died at a young age, ranks among Switzerland’s most significant and influential Expressionists. After completing his apprenticeship as a stained-glass artist, he took several courses at the Basel School of Applied Arts and presented his works for the first time in 1919 at the Christmas exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel. His intense style, his distinctive simple forms, and his radiant colors were influenced by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, whom Müller met in 1923 and with whom he became close friends. In 1924, he founded the Rot-Blau artists’ group with Hermann Scherer and Paul Camenisch, though Müller fell out with the group as early as the evening of their first exhibition. In 1926, he died at the age of just 29 from a severe case of typhoid fever. Although his creative period spanned only seven years, Albert Müller produced an enormous body of work that epitomizes Expressionism in Switzerland like few others. The painting now coming up for auction, which likely depicts a mountain landscape in his adopted home of Ticino, bears witness to the intense artistic power and radical creative drive of the Basel-born artist, so that, taken as a whole, it can certainly be described as a key work in Swiss art history of the 1920s. Auction date: November 6, 2026, 7:00 p.m.