3856 - VARLIN (ACTUALLY GUGGENHEIM, WILLY) (Zurich 1900 – 1977 Bondo): "Girls' School"

VARLIN (ACTUALLY GUGGENHEIM, WILLY) (Zurich 1900 – 1977 Bondo): "Girls' School" Oil on jute, on canvas Dated 1950 and titled on the reverse with an estate stamp and on labels 49x58 cm, framed Provenance: Galerie Specht, Carzaniga & Uecker, Basel (label on the reverse); Galerie Iris Wazzau, Davos (reverse label); private collection, Switzerland. Exhibitions: Varlin, Kunstsalon Wolfsberg, December 5, 1985 – January 4, 1986, no. 117; Varlin, Galerie Carzaniga & Ueker, Basel, September 14–October 7, 1989 (illustrated in the catalog, p. 41); Varlin, Galerie Carzaniga & Ueker, Basel, July 4–August 10, 1991; Varlin e il Ticino, Casa Rusca, Locarno, 2013 (illustrated in the catalog, p. 37). Bibliography: Paola Tedeschi-Pellanda/Patrizia Guggenheim, Varlin, Vol. 2, Catalog Raisonné of Paintings, Zurich 2000, p. 139, no. 658. The work offered here is registered with the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK) as an authentic work by Varlin (inventory no. 50338). Varlin (born Willy Guggenheim) is a unique figure in Swiss art history. Trained at renowned art schools in Berlin and Paris, he struggled throughout his life to engage with other artists. While his contemporaries were experimenting with abstraction, the idiosyncratic Varlin painted seemingly unspectacular subjects in a realistic-expressive style. This work, too, reflects this attitude of observing reality. It depicts the Scuola Magistrale in Locarno, a former Minorite monastery that served as a girls’ school in the year the painting was created. As in all the compositions Varlin created during his grand journey through Ticino in 1950, here too one sees an empty space, an old building as a backdrop, and a few pupils standing scattered and at a great distance from one another. The girls at the school all wear the same uniform and stand upright, stiffly, and without interacting with one another in the schoolyard—it seems as though everything childlike has been stripped from them by the strict institution. Traces along the edges of the painting suggest that Varlin originally planned a significantly larger work but ultimately opted for this specific cropping to heighten the effect of isolation. Auction date: November 6, 2026, 7:30 p.m.