Otto Kunzli — Conceptual Studio Jewellery from Munich
Otto Kunzli — Conceptual Studio Jewellery from Munich
The Swiss-born artist whose interrogations of value and adornment shaped the studio jewellery field
Otto Kunzli is a Swiss-born conceptual jewellery artist who, since the 1970s, has been one of the central figures in the international studio jewellery movement and a long-time professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Munich. His work systematically interrogates the assumptions of conventional fine jewellery — that value resides in precious materials, that adornment communicates social status, that wearability is a constraint on form — and uses non-precious materials, found objects, and conceptual gestures to test those assumptions. Kunzli's pieces are held in major museum collections including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.
Career
Otto Kunzli was born in Switzerland in 1948 and trained at the Schule fuer Gestaltung in Zurich and at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Munich under Hermann Junger, the German studio jeweller who shaped the second generation of conceptual jewellery in central Europe. After completing his studies, Kunzli built an international exhibition record from the late 1970s onwards, with major shows at the Stedelijk Museum, the Helen Drutt Gallery in Philadelphia, the Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen, and other key galleries of the studio jewellery field.
Kunzli succeeded Junger in 1991 as professor at the Munich Akademie, where he led the goldsmithing class for two decades. The teaching role made him one of the most influential figures in the formation of the next generation of European studio jewellers, with former students including David Bielander, Karl Fritsch, Ted Noten, and many others now active in the field.
Work
Kunzli's pieces are organised around conceptual frames rather than around material or technique. The Gold Makes Blind series of 1980 wraps a piece of gold inside a strip of black rubber, hiding the precious material from view and forcing the wearer to know rather than see the gold. The Wallpaper series of the 1980s uses adhesive wallpaper as the body of brooches, parodying the relationship between jewellery and architectural ornament. The Centifolia brooch (1983) is a simple geometric form referencing the hundred-petalled rose. Beauty Gallery (1984) is a serial work of square portrait photographs of women wearing the same picture-frame brooch.
Other works, such as the Heart brooches and the Ring with Red Stone series, translate familiar jewellery vocabularies into deliberately reduced or recontextualised forms. The pieces are wearable in the technical sense but are not jewellery in the conventional retail sense; they are conceptual objects that take jewellery as their genre and their critical target.
Position in the field
Kunzli is one of the figures by whom the studio jewellery field is defined. His work is taught in jewellery and design programmes around the world, and the conceptual frames he developed have shaped how a generation of artists thinks about jewellery as a critical medium. The field of contemporary art jewellery — distinct from fine jewellery and from craft jewellery — owes much of its current shape to Kunzli, Junger, Manfred Bischoff, Lisa Walker, and a small group of artists working in the same conceptual mode.
Kunzli's pieces sell at modest prices relative to fine jewellery — most pieces in the low to middle five-figure range in pounds — but the works function as conceptual art objects rather than as luxury goods. Auction realisations are infrequent because most pieces enter museum or long-term private collection.
In the trade
For dealers and curators of contemporary studio jewellery, Otto Kunzli is essential. His work, his teaching, and his published writing have shaped the field at a level few other living artists match. See also Hermann Junger, Karl Fritsch, studio jewellery, contemporary art jewellery.