René Groebli was born in Zurich in 1927. He took his first photos with a Rolleiflex in 1942 and began to learn photography the following year. In 1945, he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich with Hans Finsler, then trained as a film operator and began to experiment with movement photography. In 1949, he published his first book Magie der Schiene (Magic of the Rail), of a radical aesthetic by his work on the blur and the grain of the image. In 1954, Das Auge der Liebe (The Eye of Love), brought together photographs of his wife taken during their honeymoon trip and offered a poetic look at nude photography. In the 1950s, he worked as a reporter for the London agency Black Star and published in major magazines of the time, then opened a studio for advertising and industrial photography which he would keep until his retirement. Recognized as a master of color, he practices all genres and follows the stylistic and technical developments in photography over five decades, in an approach where the avant-garde blends with a more classic aesthetic. In 1981, the photographer sold his studio and moved to Provence where he rediscovered the possibilities of black and white in his personal work. In 1999, the Kunsthaus in Zurich devoted a major retrospective exhibition to him, and since then he has continued to exhibit and publish his work, happily exploring an extraordinary collection.

Courtesy of Galerie Esther Woerdehoff