Gestehe, dass ich glücklich bin (I Confess That I Am Happy) is the title of an illustrated book that Richard Seewald (1889-1976), an artist and writer of German origin, dedicated to his elected homeland: the Canton Ticino. With Uli Trotsch, whom he would marry in 1911, he first visited Ancona in 1910. He stayed near Arcegno in 1914-15 and settled permanently in Ronco sopra Ancona in 1931. "˜Nomen est omen' - it was the presence of the lake and the wood that attracted him in the place he considered the centre of Europe, where Brueghel meets Virgil and where Seewald made contact with the local artists' colony.

Having given up studying architecture in Munich in favour of art, Seewald started out as a draughtsman. He had his first solo exhibition in the renowned Galerie Thannhauser in Munich (1911), was included in the Salon d'automne in Paris (1912) and at the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon exhibition organised by Herwarth Walden in Berlin (1913). He took up teaching, at the Kölner Werkschule from 1924 to 1931, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1954 to 1958.

From the very start Seewald developed his own style influenced by the Fauves and Expressionism. Around the mid-1920s his works, which were mostly landscapes and portraits, showed an affinity with the new objectivity and magical realism, as is seen in his painting Ascona, the Lake in Winter (1927). Following his conversion to Catholicism in 1929, he executed murals, stained glass and mosaics for churches in Switzerland and Germany. A learned man, Seewald also worked as an illustrator, for his many autobiographical and travel books, and for literary works by such authors as Goethe and Andersen. He also wrote three plays and designed the sets for the Puppet Theatre in Ascona.

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Photo caption:
Richard Seewald (1889-1976), Ascona, der See im Winter / Ascona, the Lake in Winter, 1927