Aargauer Kunsthaus

During his lifetime, the Aargau-based draughtsman, painter, and poet Jos Nünlist (1936 – 2013) was seen as a quiet artist. While his precise ink drawings are reminiscent of fabrics and calligraphic characters, his watercolours feature watery colour gradients. His paintings are sometimes haptic and sometimes graphically reduced. A gate, a line, a cross, a human silhouette: the forms the artist finds for his artistic statements are simple and trenchant. Many of his pictorial ideas first took shape in the context of his diaries. Each drawing, each text is the result of a careful, thought-out creative process.

In addition to his fascination with Far Eastern worldviews and the art of great masters such as Seurat and Cézanne, the artist was influenced by the abstract formal language of French Art informel. With his poetic pictorial language he quietly rose up against a world and art scene that, to him, had long become too loud and too fast-paced.

The Aargauer Kunsthaus is devoting an intimate solo exhibition to Jos Nünlist. In addition to paintings, drawings, and prints, the diaries provide insights into the artist’s work and thought. The latter are presented here for the first time.