Beat Kohlbrenner began his career with monumental wooden sculptures and participated in the Swiss Sculpture Symposium in Zurich as early as 1972. His travels in America and Africa enriched his artistic practice and led to numerous exhibitions. He then turned to stone, making granite and marble from Ticino his preferred materials, which he works with even greater fervor when the technical challenge is immense. Now dividing his time between Zurich and Turkey, he continues his exploration of monumentality and materiality.
His works, present in numerous public and private collections, bear witness to a constant search for balance between strength and lightness. Through refined forms, Kohlbrenner explores the relationship between humanity and matter, between the density of stone and the fluidity of movement. According to him, “human existence is characterized by our original perceptual system, independent of culture and responsible for our archetypal images and forms.” This vision gives his sculptures a universal, almost timeless dimension.
His work expresses the tragic tension of the human condition: pain, love, solitude, determination. Each sculpture is born from a struggle with stone, wood, or time, and conveys a paradoxical movement: male and female figures, in conflict or in dreams, traversing space with an intensity that is at once voluptuous, tense, and elusive, like life itself.