My Encounters with Peter Kohler My Encounters with Peter Kohler Klaus Maaz Before I met him in 1973, I only knew about Peter Kohler through the mention of his name in the encyclopedic book titled Oceanic Art that had been published in New York in 1969. Its author, renowned ethnologist Carl A. Schmitz, selected nine pieces for publication in that book which Peter Kohler had collected in 1960 during his trip to the north coast of New Guinea and Manam Island. There were unique items among these objects, like the “fetish dog” from the Keram River and the limestone “Telum figure” from Astrolabe Bay. I assumed at the time that I could be sure that Peter Kohler was an expert on New Guinea. While I was on vacation in Ticino, Switzerland in 1973, I came across his remarkable gallery located on the main square of the town of Ascona, on the shore of Lake Maggiore. The canton of Ticino, formerly among the poorest regions of Switzerland, was undergoing major changes in the 1970s. The outsider town of Ascona that had been a meeting place for artists and writers before the Second World War was quickly turning into a playground for the rich. It was only in an environment like this that a gallery like Peter Kohler’s, full of artifacts from all over the world, could survive. In addition to Tibetan bronzes, antique glasses, small Buddha figures and lots of jewelry, there were also African objects. There were however none from New Guinea! I finally found them in a display window off to the side. Galleria Peter Kohler, Ascona Switzerland circa 1970. When I entered the gallery I was greeted by a friendly, good-humored, stoutly built and about sixty year old man - Peter Kohler. He expressed amazement that I knew that these objects were from New Guinea and took me to the “New Guinea - Ramu” area of the gallery. “Have a look around” he said and went on to welcome other visitors who had entered the gallery. I spent easily an hour perusing the objects, but I had not found any of the old artworks that Carl Schmitz had illustrated in his book. Sepik and Ramu River objects from Galleria Peter Kohler. When I asked Peter Kohler about this, he replied that he had only had them for a brief period. On the advice of Günter Markerts, he had gone on a collecting trip to New Guinea in 1960 that had proved very fruitful. He told me in the course of this first conversation that he had been on many collecting trips - to Africa, Asia, and Europe as well as to New Guinea - and felt that since his interests had been so diverse, he did not really believe he could rightly be considered a specialist or expert in the field of New Guinea art. He did however mention that he maintained contact with Carl Schmitz, Serge Brignoni and the Basler Museum für Völkerkunde. On a later visit to Ticino, Kohler gave me a copy of his most recent catalog for the 1963 Kunst uit Niuw Guinea exhibition he had produced at the Fodor Museum in Amsterdam. It included 225 objects and a text penned by G. Oudshoorn. The cover photo was of an Aripa figure from the Korewori River area that was being illustrated here for the first time and that Kohler had obtained from a Father Wand. Superb little Manam Island and Sepik River figures were shown in the catalog as well. The next day, he called me into his office and, to my astonishment, showed me an extraordinary, some 240 centimeter long, Yuat River figure, that a collector named K. Neumann had returned to him because it was made up of several parts. I asked Kohler for his permission to remove the piece from his gallery to look at it and photograph it in natural light. We then examined and discussed this figure without a head that he had collected in the Yuat River area. He had been told there that the Swiss travelers René Gardi and Alfred Bühler had collected the head several years earlier. Upon his return to Europe, Kohler was able to obtain the head from the Basel Museum in exchange for a number of other New Guinea works he had collected. He then had the head reconnected to the figure in Ascona. When I remarked that the surface of the underside of the chin had been very crudely worked while that of the chest and of the figure in general had been meticulously smoothed, and that that might suggest that the head had actually been attached to a different body he reacted and responded immediately, indicating to me that he would have the neck, which he had added to the figure and had manufactured for it, removed again. I never found out what became of the figure. Some years later I was received by Peter Kohler, whose wife had died in the meanwhile and who had remarried, in his beautiful home on the shores of Lake Maggiore. I found out then that Peter Kohler’s father had been a famous sculptor, illustrator and painter. Born in 1883 in Basel, he had lived in Ascona from 1919 until his passing in 1946. He had been a member of the “Grosse Bär” (Big Bear) artists’ group to which Marianne von Werefkin, who also lived in Ascona, had also belonged. Peter Kohler was exposed to an environment of art and artists from a very early age and that undoubtedly was an important factor in setting the path he followed. He saved many old objects in the Vallemaggia area of Switzerland before the Second world War, ran an art business in Milan after the war, collected and sold artworks in Spain in the 1950s, and then became an expert in African, Asian and New Guinea art, gathering knowledge through his extensive collecting trips. I learned on a subsequent visit to Ascona in 1981 that Peter Kohler had died a year earlier. His wife continued to run his gallery but without much success, before it was finally turned into a café. At left Manam Island, height 12cm, Fodor Museum.At right, Sepik River delta, height 42cm.
