Animalarium: roosters

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Call of the Mountain

The Swiss graphic designer, painter, and illustrator Alois Carigiet was born in 1902,
the seventh of eleven children, and grew up in his family's farm in the small village of Trun.
In 1911, economic hardship forced the family to move to the canton's capital Chur,
where his father found employment. This relocation into a more urban environment
had a strong impact on Carigiet, who later described the move as an "emigration to the low-lands",
from a "mountain boy's paradise" to a "gloomy apartment on the ground floor in a narrow town alley".
In 1918 he quit the gymnasium to start an apprenticeship as a decorative designer and draftsman.
While learning the techniques of decorative art,Carigiet filled volumes of sketchbooks
with drawings of rural and urban scenes, farm animals and pets, anatomical studies of the birds
exhibited at Chur's natural history museum, and caricatures.

1936

In the same year he found work in Zurich with Max Dalang's advertisement agency, where he learned

the techniques of graphic design. After having won several competitions and gained a reputation,
Carigiet opened his own graphic studio in Zurich in 1927. He hired some assistants and
built a very successful practice, creating many posters, murals, illustrations, and magazine covers.
Funny and elegant animal characters were a frequent theme in the ads produced by the studio.

1938

1940 ca.

While on holiday in his native mountains in 1939, Carigiet was seduced by the vast and unspoiled landscape,

and the feeling of having found his way back to a long lost paradise. Realizing that this was his home,
he gave up his business in Zurich, and rented a small farm house without electricity or running water,
the "Hüs am Bach" (house at the stream) in Platenga, where he devoted much of his time
to observing and drawing the alpine fauna. In 1943 he married the art student Berta Carolina Müller,
and in the following years the couple gave birth to two daughters and built a house.

1943

1947

1948

In 1940, Carigiet was asked by the author Selina Chönz to illustrate a children's story

about a boy's adventurous climb through snow to an abandoned summer hut in order to retrieve

a large cow bell for the annual Chalandamarz celebration. After years of hesitating, Carigiet finally agreed,

and spent several weeks sketching the scenery and architecture in Chönz's home village Guarda,

which he used as a model for the book's village. In 1945 Schellen-Ursli was published in German,

and later it was translated into ten languages, including English.

A Bell for Ursli

Carigiet and Chönz created two sequels featuring Ursli's younger sister Flurina:

Flurina und das Wildvögelein (Florina and the Wild Bird) in 1952

and Der grosse Schnee (The Snowstorm) in 1957.

Flurina und das Wildvöglein

During the 1960s Carigiet illustrated three children's books written by himself:
Zottel, Zick und Zwerg, Birnbaum, Birke, Berberitze, and Maurus und Madleina.

In 1966, he was awarded the Swiss youth book prize for Zottel, Zick und Zwerg,

as well as the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Medal for children's illustrators.

After moving back to Zurich with his family between 1950 and 1960,
in 1960 Carigiet finally returned to live in the mountains above his home village,
where he dedicated himself fully to art until his death in 1985.