History of a collection
In the 1940s the artist Alfred Glaus, the retired city councillor Fritz Lehner, and the retired city president Paul Kunz began the search for a suitable exhibition venue for the works of art owned by the city at the time. In summer 1948 an art commission chaired by Fritz Lehner was appointed and Alfred Glaus entrusted with the task of ordering, maintaining and managing the collection. In autumn of the same year, rooms on the ground floor of the former "Grand Hotel" Thunerhof, built in 1875 by Adolphe Tièche, were made available for the purpose of exhibiting works of art. The art museum has been housed in the Thunerhof since then.
The basis of the collection
The basis of the collection is a number of paintings taken over from the various departments of the city administration. An extensive stock of graphic art was donated to the museum by the Landammann Carl Friedrich Ludwig Lohner. This was followed by a collection of Thun vedute (mainly by minor Swiss artists) and hand drawings and graphic art by the Thun artist Werner Engel. The artist Fred Hopf left behind him a considerable oeuvre and the museum was able to acquire that estate.
Donations
The museum has also received donations from private persons: in 1950 and 1956 Hans Lüthi-Hefti was the first person in Thun to donate parts of his collection to the museum. In 1957 Alfred Glaus presented the museum with his complete lithographic oeuvre. In 1990 the museum received a further donation from the artist's heirs. The first donations by the Swiss Federation were in 1959. Later, artists themselves made donations. Gottfried Tritten, among others, was to make several donations of works to the museum. The Friends of the Kunstmuseum also helped make a number of acquisitions possible. Deposits and gifts followed from Karl Geiser and Ernst Morgenthaler (1971), Karl and Ruth Stauffer (1972), Olga and Ruth Mayser (1976), Victor Surbek and Marguerite Frey-Surbek (1977-81), Rudolf Mumprecht (1981) and many others.
Emphasis
In addition to representative stocks of works by minor Swiss artists (Lory, Aberli, Lafond, Wocher, Weibel and others), the Kunstmuseum Thun also has some interesting works by Swiss artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Ferdinand Hodler, Cuno Amiet, René Auberjonois, Paul Klee, Otto Morach, Johannes Itten, Alfred Glaus, Otto Nebel, Varlin and Meret Oppenheim. Works by artists representing Swiss Pop Art and Photorealism form another focal point of the collection. The collection is being constantly extended by works of contemporary Swiss artists, such as for example Balthasar Burkhard, Karim Noureldin, Claudia &Julia Müller or Lutz/Guggisberg.
Acquisitions of works from artists in the region lend the collection its particular character. The monochrome works by Peter Willen (*1941) or the photographs by the young Thun artist Chantal Michel (*1968) are some of the highlights of a collection which meantime embraces more than 5,000 works.