Obituary: Marc Jurt

Published 1 year, 11 months ago in Miscellaneous by ablteam | 809 Views

Marc Jurt 1955-2006

Marc was born in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) in 1955. At nineteen he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Geneva, specializing in the study of engraving. He quickly became very successful and had more than hundred one-man or group exhibitions all over the world, a continuous success until his too early death two weeks ago.

In 1980, he spent nine months in Bali where he created engravings, drawings and photographs. He became interested in Balinese culture, particularly its temple festivals, music, and ritual dance. Studied the art of engraving on lontar palm leaves, composed small pictures by juxtaposing the leaves and gluing them to wood. During the next 20 years, he was a regular visitor to Bali, especially in 1985 when he stayed six months in a house in Sayan and carried out a lot of new creative productions. The main event linked to his special relationship with Bali was the solo exhibition of 150 paintings, objects, engravings, and monotype prints which was held at ARMA in 1997. In the catalogue of this exhibition entitled Anatomies of the Invisible, Diana Darling writes about his work : For Marc Jurt, the concern is with the inner energies of nature, with what is concealed by appeareance. He contemplates, rather than investigates, what is enclosed by a seed pod or wrapped in an offering. He is inetrested in the ambiguity of meaning behind coincidence. If he dissects, it is not to expose reality – as in the scientific engravings of earlier Europeans – but to expose the mystery of reality.

During the last five years most of his energy was focussed on the creation and management of the MARC JURT FOUNDATION (FMJ), a cultural institution situated in Vaumarcus within an old castle near the lake of Neuchâtel. The foundation is dedicated to the art of engraving and has three mains activities annually :
- to expose the most recent creations of Marc,
- to organize a show of a great master of engraving (Chagall, Miro, Picasso, Moore);
- to give a grant to a young artist.

The foundation has numerous visitors from all over the world. In November 2004, we had the great pleasure of a special visit by Bapak Agung Rai and his wife.

Marc’s last trip to Bali one and half years ago was disturbed by his health problems but he began his fourth chemotheraphy in 30 years with courage and optimism. I met him for the last time on the day before my departure to Bali, 3 weeks ago, he was full of projects especially related to Bali where he planned to exhibit again soon. An in memoriam exhibition will be held at the foundation from 17th of June to October. Don’t miss it in case you are travelling in Switzerland.

Marc always read the BACN with pleasure. He will be missed by his numerous friends in Bali and elsewhere in the world. We present our condolences to his wife Lucinda and his family.

Georges Breguet
President of the Marc Jurt Foundation (Vaumarcus–Switzerland))
Geneva – Sanur
HP : +62 813 372 388 01.

Editor’s Note:
Website of Marc Jurt and the foundation:
www.marcjurt.ch

Bookmark this at

Related posts

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 27th, 2006 at 11:58 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Tags: arma, Obituary, temple, ubud.