These are antique pieces and are sold as such. Although VV does its best to highlight major flaws, minor imperfections should be expected reflecting the age and previous use of the piece.
This large-format drawing by Swiss artist Emil Schwarz unfolds as a field of human figures, multiplied, fragmented and redistributed across the surface. Intimate in gesture and monumental in scale, it asks to be read slowly, cell by cell.
Executed in pencil on paper, the drawing is built as a grid of loosely defined vignettes, each holding a schematic figure within a horizontal register of lines. Rather than resolving into a single image, the composition works through accumulation and variation: the figure repeated, reinterpreted and unsettled across a matrix that imposes order while quietly undoing it.
The line is rapid yet deliberate. Hatching, cross-hatching and open contour suggest form without fixing it, so that each vignette stands as a study of its own and as part of a larger rhythm. The grid recalls storyboards, notation and serial art, while remaining grounded in the immediacy of hand and pencil.
In What Remains, the drawing brings the sensitivity of our different emotions. After the structure of David Bürkle's wall object, each small figure becomes a state of being: the same body, held again and again in a different feeling.
The work will be exhibited in What Remains, an exhibition curated by Valeria Viollaz at The mep, Lucerne, from 7 November to 2 December 2026.
Artist: Emil Schwarz, Switzerland
Technique: Pencil on paper
Measurements: 70 × 100 cm
Year: 2007
Framing: Natural wood frame with passe-partout
Condition: Please enquire
Exhibited: What Remains · The mep, Lucerne · 7 November – 2 December 2026
About the Artist
Emil Schwarz was a Swiss artist whose practice centred on drawing as a primary and autonomous medium. Working mainly in pencil and ink, he developed a figurative language defined by economy of line, repetition and compositional rigour, returning again and again to the human figure as both subject and formal question.
This large-format drawing by Swiss artist Emil Schwarz unfolds as a field of human figures, multiplied, fragmented and redistributed across the surface. Intimate in gesture and monumental in scale, it asks to be read slowly, cell by cell.
Executed in pencil on paper, the drawing is built as a grid of loosely defined vignettes, each holding a schematic figure within a horizontal register of lines. Rather than resolving into a single image, the composition works through accumulation and variation: the figure repeated, reinterpreted and unsettled across a matrix that imposes order while quietly undoing it.
The line is rapid yet deliberate. Hatching, cross-hatching and open contour suggest form without fixing it, so that each vignette stands as a study of its own and as part of a larger rhythm. The grid recalls storyboards, notation and serial art, while remaining grounded in the immediacy of hand and pencil.
In What Remains, the drawing brings the sensitivity of our different emotions. After the structure of David Bürkle's wall object, each small figure becomes a state of being: the same body, held again and again in a different feeling.
The work will be exhibited in What Remains, an exhibition curated by Valeria Viollaz at The mep, Lucerne, from 7 November to 2 December 2026.
Artist: Emil Schwarz, Switzerland
Technique: Pencil on paper
Measurements: 70 × 100 cm
Year: 2007
Framing: Natural wood frame with passe-partout
Condition: Please enquire
Exhibited: What Remains · The mep, Lucerne · 7 November – 2 December 2026
About the Artist
Emil Schwarz was a Swiss artist whose practice centred on drawing as a primary and autonomous medium. Working mainly in pencil and ink, he developed a figurative language defined by economy of line, repetition and compositional rigour, returning again and again to the human figure as both subject and formal question.
These are antique pieces and are sold as such. Although VV does its best to highlight major flaws, minor imperfections should be expected reflecting the age and previous use of the piece.
