Landscapes
Julius Voegtli’s landscapes underscore the importance of this genre and for art in general, serving as his artistic cornerstones in the years before World War II. At this point, Voegtli is moving away from Romanticism and realistic depictions here towards a more subjective form of expression. The sketchy application of color, visible brushstrokes, and inventive use of colors are clearly evident in his artworks.
Potraits
Voegtli’s portraits reflect the importance of characters and reveal a poignant eye for power structures. Women, black people, children, and even animals are marked as the oppressed, while the white men exhibit the traits of oppressors. For Voegtli, portraiture is a way to show an ideal society where humans and animals live together in harmony. In a time when people were so full of hatred and greed that they could not see the suffering of the oppressed and the animals, he created human and animal beings that still effectively address our conscience today.
Still Life
Julius Voegtli portrayed what surrounded him. It was a mundane life for others, but not for the sensitive painter. With his still-life paintings, he wanted to clearly express the lack of colorful flowers in our everyday life. That is why he put them in the vase. A vase, a relatively rare item at that time, combines nature and culture.
Caricatures
In his charcoal drawings, Voegtli humorously depicted man’s problems with his self-made modernity. In his 25 satirical works, automobile scenes appear again and again. The titles of the caricatures, all written in hearty Schwyzerdutsch (Swiss German) dialect, all rhyme. They are related to each other by rhyming couplets.
The pioneer of this creative evolution was the German caricaturist Wilhelm Busch, who today is regarded worldwide as the inventor of the comic strip: the continuous ‘picture stories’. Following the example of Wilhelm Busch, who also worked with rhyming couplets, Voegtli did not draw his caricatures individually but as a continuous series.
