Portrait d'enfant, Circa 1907

Carl Albert Angst  

Son of a cabinetmaker. A. worked as a woodcutter and woodcarver (Art Nouveau furniture among others) in Paris from 1896 to 1911, first with Jean-Auguste Dampt, then as a freelance from 1903, while drawing and sculpting, especially portraits of children. He won one of the five prizes for the project of a Swiss national monument on the theme "the age of heroes" in 1909. Professor at the School of Industrial Arts in Geneva (1911-1913), member of the Federal Commission for fine arts (1916-1918, 1927-1930). Author of sculptures for public places, bust portraits and medallions (Barthélemy Menn, Ferdinand Hodler), the framing of the Lausanne station clock, the Justice frontispiece and three portal crowns for the Tribunal federal. A. was sometimes inspired by Greek and Egyptian art. He never completely got rid of the influence of Auguste Rodin, whose taste for symbols and psychological allusions he shared. Many of his works burned down in the fire at the Geneva Museum of Art and History in 1987.

Student of the School of Industrial Arts in Geneva (1889-1894). Installed in Paris from 1895 to 1910, worked as a wood sculptor (furniture and decoration) with the sculptor Jean Dampt. A woodwork is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

He exhibited in 1896, at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts in Paris, a piece of walnut furniture, later acquired by the Museum of Art and History of Geneva.

In 1905, performed L'Ancêtre in sculpted wood, a portrait of his father, kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Le Locle.

From 1906 to 1910, he sculpted Short Hours (Swiss National Museum in Zurich), L'Éveil (Basel Museum), The Craftsman for which he received a gold medal at the Munich Ice Palace, the marble group du Printemps, and a large maternity unit entitled Le Baiser, all three at the Geneva Museum of Art and History, the Premiers Pas bronze (formerly at the Luxembourg museum in Paris).

In 1909, he was appointed member for life of the National Society of Fine Arts in Paris, Auguste Rodin then being president of the jury.

In 1910, he became an honorary bourgeois of Geneva, where he returned in 1911 and was appointed professor at the School of Arts and Crafts.

In 1913, he gave up teaching to devote himself entirely to sculpture.

Until 1920, his main achievements were the decoration of the clock at Lausanne station; the Monnier-Valette fountain at Calvin college in Geneva; four bas-reliefs representing Children's Actions at the Quai du Mont-Blanc in Geneva; the Monument to Édouard Rod, promenade des Marronniers in Nyon; a monumental stone Maternity and a marble entitled The Birth of Man at the Geneva Museum of Art and History; two large figures Morning and Evening, in stone acquired by the Gottfried Keller Foundation (Geneva Museum of Art and History), two stone stelae, Adolescents, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Le Locle.

Between 1920 and 1930, four so-called soapstone statues from Franche-Comté, Les Saisons, adorn the peristyle of the Geneva Museum of Art and History. His Monument to Adrien Lachenal, President of the Confederation, is erected in the Plainpalais cemetery and his Monument to the soldiers of Geneva in the Mon-Repos park. He designed the exterior decorations of the Federal Court of Lausanne with the bas-reliefs of the three entrance doors, those of The Prosecution, The Defense, The Judges and Justice for the pediment of the building, and the marble of the Sleeping Woman, variant of the Birth of man.

In 1927, he was a member of the jury at the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1928, he was decorated with the Legion of Honor by the French government. He was a member of the Beaux-Arts jury for the Olympic Games in Amsterdam, and in 1929 he was an organizing member of the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Brussels.

Between 1930 and 1940, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Le Locle acquired its Ève in black granite. A bronze statue of a young girl adorns the Zürichhorn promenade on the shores of Lake Zurich. He carves a Christ on the cross (Hand of God). The Swiss National Library acquires a bronze figure titled Eve with the Apple. His Monument to Pierre-Nicolas Chenaux was erected in Bulle on September 24, 19331. He sculpts two elongated statues representing Artémis and Dionysos for the Cornavin station in Geneva, and a bronze Maternity unit adorning the Boulevard de la Cluse in Geneva.

His last great works are the statue

Carl Angst died in Geneva on May 4, 1965 and is buried in the cemetery of the Kings. His work entitled Towards infinity adorns his burial place.

His unfinished projects and the studies and variations of those he completed (drawings, terracotta and plaster) are kept at the Museum of Art and History of Geneva. All of its life-size or monumental statues were destroyed during the Palais Wilson fire in 1987; among these were Mother and Child, Ephebe, Prometheus, Suzanne and Pietà.

The namebre of some 175 works in the catalog of Carl Angst's works, we must add more than a hundred busts, medallions and plaques.

Among these portraits, the University of Geneva keeps those of the surgeon C. de Candolle, of the professor B. Bouvier, of the doctor J. L. Reverdin, of the writer and critic Albert Thibaudet and of the doctor and psychologist Édouard Claparède. The cantonal hospital of Geneva retains that of the doctor-surgeon E. Kummer.

Among his other busts are those of the painter Ferdinand Hodler, the musician Gustave Doret, the painter Horace de Saussure, the man of letters H. de Ziegler, the Swiss minister in Paris Alphonse Dunant, the French consul in Geneva America. Leroy, the man of letters Daniel Baud-Bovy, the painter L. Barraud, the ethnologist Eugène Pittard, etc.

His daughter Lyvia (1912-1984) married the Geneva musician Samuel Baud-Bovy in 1934.