René Groebli

René Groebli was born on the 9th of October 1927 in Zurich.

1945 he visited the preparation class, from 1946 the photography class of Hans Finsler at the Art School in Zurich. Between 1946 and 1948 he completed the formation as a documentary cameraman at Central Film and Gloria Film in Zurich and finished it with a diploma. As a photo reporter he carried out jobs for the magazine «Die Woche», later for the London agency «Black Star» in Africa and the Middle East.

His first two book publications were «Magie der Schiene» (Rail Magic, 1949), a poetic essay, and the image series «Das Auge der Liebe» (The Eye of Love, 1954, new edition 2014). In the exhibition «The Family of Man» that Edward Steichen had organised for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, René Groebli was represented together with the Swiss photographers Werner Bischof, Robert Frank and Gotthard Schuh. 1954 the Council of Swiss Photographers accepted him together with Robert Frank as members.

After a short period he quit photo journalism and founded in the mid-Fifties his own studio for advertising and industrial photography. Groebli specialised in colour photography and experimented with the Dye Transfer process. In 1957, the American magazine «Color Annual» honoured him as «Master of Color».

After the early 1980s he turned again to his artistic essays in black and white. Towards the end of the 20th and during the first decade of the 21st century he reprocessed his image archive and digitalised the most important photographs of his oeuvre that grew over 60 years.

Submitted by Bildhalle