The exhibition Rolf Gerard – Spring Paintings – currently underway at the Epper House ofHotel Eden Roc in Ascona – traces the artist's biography, an artist who belongs to that European generation that endured wars, migrations, and profound cultural transformations, transforming difficulties into creative trajectories. Born in Berlin on August 9, 1909, the son of a scientist of Huguenot origin and of the singer Italian Mafalda Salvatini grew up in an environment where intellectual discipline and artistic sensitivity coexisted from childhood.
Even before learning to read and write, he was drawing. His first caricatures date back to the Great War, when the young author used graphic irony as a form of dialogue with his father.observation of human behavior soon becomes the center of his interest: teachers and reference figures are portrayed and often symbolically combined with animals, in a research that privileges form and visual synthesis.
La chromatic dimension, initially secondary, develops during youthful travels in Southern Italy, North Africa and the northern regions of Europe. The discovery of color is intertwined with a constant interest in the classical world, in particular for Greece and for the narrative universe of theOdyssey, which fuel imagination and a sense of travel.
The choice of studies and a changing Europe
Despite his artistic vocation, his family steered young Rolf toward medicine, with a strong emphasis on scientific disciplines, complemented by philosophy and logic. The goal was to provide a solid and pragmatic education, in an era where professional stability seemed a priority.
In the 1930s, while Germany was experiencing an increasingly tense political climate, the author found himself in Oxford In 1932, an experience that allowed him to closely observe the European context from an outside perspective. The following year, the situation at home became incompatible with his stay: he left the country and moved to Paris.
He completed his academic training at the Sorbonne, but it was in Basel that he completed his medical studies, earning his doctorate in 1937. Shortly thereafter, he settled in London, where family ties to the world of music and theater fostered new collaborations. Since he could not practice medicine, a professional career in the performing arts gradually opened up.
During the Second World War, when the shortage of doctors was acute, Gérard returned to healthcare, even working as an emergency physician in ambulances. His clinical experience intertwined with his cultural activity, achieving a rare balance between scientific practice and artistic creation.
Theater, music and decisive encounters
During this period he comes into contact with the director Peter Brook, beginning a collaboration that would leave a significant mark on the international theater scene. At the same time, he met Oscar Kokoschka, a central figure in twentieth-century art, with whom he developed an intellectual and creative exchange.
At the end of the conflict, he worked again with Peter Brook on the production of Romeo and Juliet in Stratford upon Avon. In those years he obtained the British citizenship, a passage that consolidates its roots in the Anglo-Saxon cultural context.
Important roles in the opera field followed: his commitment to Glyndebourne Opera, dedicated primarily to Mozart's repertoire, and subsequently Rudolf Bing's call to the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1950. For over twenty years he collaborated with the prestigious American institution, designing sets and projects that led him to travel between Europe and America.
Recognition and new cultural relations
In 1955 Marie Cuttoli made a workspace available to him in the museum dedicated to Pablo Picasso in Antibes, with the Spanish artist's consent. The environment also fostered experimentation in ceramics, in a climate of creative exchange. Some works created during this period were exhibited in Paris and purchased by the French state.
His artistic career received official recognition: in 1959 he was nominated Knight of the Legion of Honour, and in 1971 promoted to Officier, a testament to a career consolidated between Europe and the United States.
Geneva, mourning and a new beginning
Following the call to the artistic direction of the Geneva Opera, theRolf Gérard's activities He further focuses on the Swiss context. However, personal events mark a complex phase: the illness of his wife, a central figure and constant source of inspiration, leaves a profound void. After her passing, his connection with Ginevra is severed.
In a moment of transition, her gaze falls on two elements that had remained distant for decades: a woman and a lake, both linked to Ascona. The Ticino town thus becomes the destination of an itinerant life, offering a working and reflective environment in continuity with the European experience she had developed up to that point.
The move marks not only a geographical change, but a new creative phase, in which memory, color, and landscape intertwine with the personal dimension.
