Jakob Wäch – An unknown acquaintance from the collection of the Glarner Kunstverein

The Glarus artist Jakob Wäch is an unknown acquaintance: He died too young to leave behind a great achievement, too early to ascertain if the hopes for the painter’s talent could be fulfilled. Today only 30 paintings and 100 drawings by Wäch are known to exist, of which a significant part belongs to the collection of the Glarner Kunstverein. Jakob Wäch, the son of a butcher from Glarus, expressed his desire early on to take up fine arts. With this goal in mind, he transferred from the Art School for Industry and Trade in St. Gallen to the Debschitz School in Munich, where fine arts as well as applied arts were taught. At the outbreak of the World War, when he was forced to return to Switzerland, he found in the otherwise artistically uninspiring narrowness of his native country a well-versed dialogue partner in Alexander Soldenhoff (1882 – 1951). Their friendship bore the characteristics of an intensive teacher-pupil relationship, as clearly seen in a comparison of certain works from that period. At the time of his death of the Spanish influenza in 1918, Wäch left behind one picture that surpasses all the rest in terms of dimension and complexity of composition; in ‹Large Self Portrait›, around 1917, in which he actually portrayed himself three times, the young man appears to be someone who is just discovering himself, questioning himself and his artistic conception of himself while painting.

The exhibition arranged by Roman Kurzmeyer at the Kunsthaus Glarus in 1997, on the occasion of which a monograph about the artist was published, saved Wäch from falling into oblivion. In 2003 the Kunsthaus Glarus was able to augment its existing collection of paintings with additional works of the artist on permanent loan. The exhibition at the Kunsthaus Glarus is now showing Jakob Wäch’s achievement with works from its collection, juxtaposing them – together with several objects on permanent loan – with works of his artist friend, Alexander Soldenhoff.