Peter Robert Berry II
Contemporaries

No artist stands alone. Peter Robert Berry was also impressed by his contemporaries and absorbed many influences. Perhaps the most important was the art and person of Giovanni Segantini (1858 – 1899). His divisionist painting technique as well as his pictorial language were to inspire Berry's artistic work. Because the stateless Segantini had found a home not far from St. Moritz in Maloja, Berry got to know him personally.

Giovanni Giacometti (1868 – 1933) was at home in the Val Bregaglia, which adjoins the Engadine to the west. Berry cultivated an intimate friendship with him. In the autumn of 1898, Peter Robert Berry felt so strongly drawn to painting that he asked his friend in a touching letter to teach him how to handle oil colours. Unfortunately, Berry's request came at an inopportune moment and Giacometti postponed his request until the winter. In his reply, however, he showed warm sympathy and supported his friend in his desire to paint.

Other personal references include the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler (1853 – 1918), the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) and the painter Andrea Robbi (1864 – 1945) from Sils.

Giovanni Segantini
(1858 - 1899)

When Giovanni Segantini settled with his family in Maloja in 1894, he was a well-known painter. His artworks were shown in museums in Berlin and Vienna, Hamburg and Munich, Rome and Milan, Liverpool and San Francisco. The hoteliers of the Engadine wanted to take advantage of the artist's charisma, and the enterprising hotelier of the Maloja Palace, A. Walther-Denz, was able to win Segantini over to the idea of an Engadine panorama project for the World Exhibition of 1900 in Paris.

The panorama was to serve as a great advertisement for the Engadine. On 7 October 1897 Segantini presented the project to a small circle of interested people, and on 14 October the painter spoke to more than 100 people at the Hotel Bernina in Samedan and recorded in flaming words the tourist marketing of such a project: "Our Engadin must be more appreciated and known in the world, and for this purpose there will perhaps never be a more favourable opportunity than the one given to us by the great exhibition that Paris offers at the end of the century as a rendezvous of intelligence and wealth".

Peter Robert Berry II was one of the first enthusiastic supporters. Segantini appeared to him as a shining example in his turning to and examination of the beauty of the mountain landscape. Thus, from a medical point of view, he wrote a committed "Study on the Significance of an Engadine Panorama in Paris on the Occasion of the World Exhibition". The admiration for Segantini's art can be heard from every line.

In later years, he became close friends with his daughter Bianca Segantini, and Peter Robert Berry II was also one of the co-founders of the Segantini Museum. In 1907, the "Comitato per il Museo Segantini" commissioned the St. Moritz architect Nikolaus Hartmann Jr. to design a memorial to the artist. Peter Robert Berry III, the painter's son, was also president of this "Comitato" for 40 years.

Giovanni Giacometti
(1868 – 1933)

After attending the School of Applied Arts in Munich, Giacometti studied at the Académie Julian in Paris from October 1888 to May 1891. Returning to Grisons, he became a central protagonist in the artistic exploration of the Val Bregaglia and Engadine. He is regarded as the painter who brought Post-Impressionism to Switzerland, and he is the father of the avant-garde artist Alberto Giacometti (1901 - 1966).

Berry wrote to Giacometti on 6 September 1898: "Last autumn, tempted by those wonderful symphonies of colour in the autumn landscape, and following an irresistible urge, I drove around the mountains for weeks with coloured pencils and sketchbook. But I soon had to make the saddening experience that the cold, hard colour pencils were not able to reproduce my painterly feeling. So I resorted to the pastel pencil without the slightest idea of how to use it. The resulting sketch corresponds to some extent to my artistic intention, but without satisfying me. Therefore, in autumn, when I am 'relieved' professionally, I would like to learn with all my heart how to use oil colours & would like to ask you herewith whether you would have the time & inclination to fulfil this most ardent wish of mine? (...) You can easily feel, as an artist, how powerful the urge must be in me to approach you for such a friendship service, despite all the reasons that have kept me from it so far, yet I know how much the painter, & artist in general, needs peace & quiet to live his work! Nevertheless, I hope that you will understand me, that you could perhaps sacrifice a few hours to me, for which I would be heartily obliged to you (...)".

Ferdinand Hodler
(1853 – 1918)

Hodler is classified as a Symbolist and member of Art Nouveau, but at the same time he is considered one of the most important painters of the Alpine landscape due to his intense engagement with nature. He was a famous international representative of Swiss art around 1900 and won three gold medals at the World Exhibition in Paris.

From a letter that Ferdinand Hodler wrote from St. Moritz to Giovanni Giacometti in Stampa on 24 March 1907, it can be concluded that Hodler and Peter Robert Berry II met in St. Moritz in the winter of 1907. Two sketches that Hodler dedicated to his hostess Maria Berry-Rocco and drew in her guest book bear witness to the visit, the exchange and a closer relationship between Hodler and the Berry family.

Later, Berry would record in his memoirs that Hodler had advised him to switch completely to painting. Hodler wrote to Giacometti about his meeting with Berry: "I have already seen many things here [in St. Moritz] and made many good acquaintances, including Dr. Bärri [meaning Peter Robert Berry II], who paints very well and is certainly already a very capable painter. He has pretty colours, and you can feel that he grew up in a good milieu between you and Segantini.

Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844 – 1900)

Friedrich Nietzsche is probably one of the best-known philosophers in the world. Originally a classical philologist, he was offered a professorship at the University of Basel as early as 1867. For health reasons, however, he withdrew from teaching and subsequently stayed frequently in the Engadine.

When Friedrich Nietzsche first came to the high valley in Graubünden in 1879 to recover from his oppressive suffering, he found himself mirrored, as it were, in this landscape. Delighted, he wrote to his friend, the theologian Overbeck, in Basel: "But now I have taken possession of the Engadin and am as if in my element, quite wondrous! I am related to this nature."

Various testimonies indicate that Nietzsche stayed with the Berry family in St. Moritz during this first stay in the Engadine. Peter Robert Berry II, for example, remembers meeting the quiet, peace-loving gentleman who stayed in the attic of the Viletta, just below his parents' house with an unobstructed view of the lake, where he studied and wrote. From 1881 onwards, Nietzsche spent several summers in the more tranquil Sils-Maria.

Berry began reading Nietzsche at an early age. After giving up his job as a spa doctor in St. Moritz in 1895, he had first become aware of Nietzsche's writings during his study visit to Berlin in the same year. His estate contains the Collected Works. Many books are marked by underlining and marginal notes, giving insight into the intensity of his reading. Berry would often later record in his notes that Nietzsche had changed his life.

Andrea Robbi
(1864 – 1945)

Andrea Robbi grew up in Carrara in Tuscany and in the small Piedmontese town of Saluzzo near Turin, where his parents ran the Pasticceria Methier & Robbi. The family spent the summer in Sils Maria, the place of origin of Andrea's father Rudolf Robbi. Robbi and Peter Robert Berry II spent their school years together at the Kantonsschule Chur.

Like Berry, Robbi returned home after years of studying art and settled in his native village of Sils Maria. After 1900, Robbi increasingly shut himself off from his environment and was finally known in the village as a "badger", a loner. What is known about Andrea Robbi's life so far indicates that he gave up painting almost completely after 1900, at a time when Berry's career was just beginning.

The outstanding artist Andrea Robbi was only discovered in the 1980s. Today his paintings, which captivate with their sensitive colourfulness and successful compositions, are exhibited in the Sils Museum of the Andrea Robbi Foundation in Sils Maria.