Karl Schmid

Place: Zurich

Born: 1914

Death: 1998

Biography:

Karl Schmid (10 May 1914 – 13 August 1998) was a Swiss artist active from the 1930s to the 1990s. He was a painter, sculptor, engraver, illustrator, graphic designer and teacher. Schmid was born in Zürich. His father, of Jewish origin, died in the First World War. His mother, who was left to live in extreme poverty, suffered from epilepsy and schizophrenia; at each of her hospitalizations, Schmid was sent to an orphanage, where he spent his childhood and a good part of his adolescence. Schmid frequently dreamt of becoming a medical surgeon, but he also demonstrated a passion for woodcarving, which he further explored through an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker and carpenter. This handicraft training will serve as a foundation for his later work as an artist. Still pursuing a fuller education, he ended up attending an evening high school and some advanced courses at the School of Arts and Crafts. Schmid spent part of his free time in the public library in Zurich, where he reads about everything, with a predilection for literature and, above all, art. During his formative years he met artists such as Oskar Kokoschka and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Schmid and Kirchner met in Davos, in a sanatorium for tuberculosis, a disease which, at the time, they both suffered from. "...Their mutual illness, but even more so their common enthusiasm for a new expressive concept of art, brought them closer together, and a deep friendship quickly developed."