5 MAY 2026
With René Groebli, the photographic world loses one of the most significant artists and photographic designers of the 20th century. Born on 9 October 1927 in Zurich, Groebli studied for a short time at the local School of Applied Arts, then completed an apprenticeship as a documentary cameraman, subsequently establishing himself as a photojournalist. His reports from Africa and the Middle East appeared in international magazines such as Picture Post, Life, Illustrated, and Die Woche, although he never fully reconciled himself with the profession of reporting. He remained, above all, an artist – an independent creative mind who was reluctant to submit to the demands of daily news.
Groebli's œuvre, that much is clear, cannot be reduced to a single theme, genre or style. Multifaceted would be the least one could say about his work. Time and again, he has ventured into new photographic territory without settling there permanently. As a photographic author, he has reinvented himself over and over, setting new standards both as an artist and as an imaginative professional. The Swiss artist regularly attempted the unheard of, or rather, the previously unseen - to the amazement of his contemporaries, who did not always understand what was going on aesthetically and formally. René Groebli is a doer, a tinkerer, an explorer and inventor whose preferred stage is the studio, the laboratory, the darkroom.
Two independently produced photobooks – Rail Magic (1949) and The Eye of Love (1954) – received little attention at the time of their publication, but in retrospect confirm René Groebli as a pioneer of subjective, narrative photography and are now regarded as sought-after examples of an international photobook culture. In particular, the series The Eye of Love – a visual love poem to his wife Rita, created during their honeymoon in Paris – has produced images that are now considered iconic. The work Sitting Nude was acquired by Edward Steichen for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and more recently, the series even served as inspiration for an entire collection by a major Parisian fashion house.
In the mid-1950s, Groebli decided to pursue a career in advertising. The highly equipped studio he opened in 1955 in Zurich-Wollishofen quickly developed into an epicentre of applied photography, not only in Switzerland. René Groebli made pioneering contributions especially in the field of early colour photography, while always also drawing on the results of his darkroom experiments for his artistic work. Throughout his life, Groebli moved between applied and fine art, advertising and art, commissioned work and self-initiated projects. In 1981, the “Master of Color,” as he was once called by an American photography journal, withdrew from professional life without abandoning photography altogether. Until the end, René Groebli continued to exhibit internationally, to work creatively in the fields of nude, landscape, and portrait photography, and to publish photobooks. It was only later in life that he was discovered by the international photography scene for what he had long been: a major artist, a committed visionary, and someone who bridged art and craft.