Fritz Glarner, Young Girl by the Window, Oil on Canvas

Fritz Glarner (July 20, 1899 in Zurich - September 18, 1972 in Locarno) was a Swiss-American painter. Glarner was a leading proponent of what is known as Concrete Art, a movement of artists whose roots can be traced back to De Stijl painters and Bauhaus principles. He was a follower of Piet Mondrian, heavily influenced by Mondrian's theories of "dynamic symmetry". As he developed as an artist, his works began to be increasingly influenced by Mondrian's neoplastic theory. His penchant for non-figurative art began in 1929 in Paris, where he was a member of the Abstraction-Création group. Glarner took up Mondrian's motif of arranging simplified colors and shapes on an architectural model.[1] Glarner introduced a diagonal into Mondrian's strict horizontal and vertical geometric aesthetic, creating new and equally systematic principles of composition which he called "relational painting". Like Mondrian, Glarner limited his color palette to the primaries, red, yellow and blue. He extended Mondrian's black "line" to a wide range of grays, used both as a line and, like the primaries, as geometric areas of color. Many of his works are tondos, his characteristic relational principles ordered in a circle. Glarner's additions and modifications of structure and color to the Mondrian style gave his works vitality and spatial dimensions. 24 of his works belong to the Museo Cantonale d'Arte in Lugano, Switzerland. A mural by Glarner is included in the art collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY. Although Glarner is Swiss, born in Zurich and has kept close ties to his home country, he has lived most of his life as an expat. He spent his childhood and youth in Italy and France. He studied and worked in Paris from 1923 to 1935. Glarner emigrated to the United States in 1936, living and working first in Manhattan, then in a studio and residence on Long Island. In 1966 he was seriously injured in rough seas on an ocean liner crossing from Europe to America. He returned to Switzerland in 1971 and settled in Locarno. He died the following year.