Cuno Amiet
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Cuno Amiet (Solothurn, March 28th, 1868 - Oschwand, July 6th, 1961) was a Swiss painter and sculptor.
Amiet was born in 1868 in the Swiss town of Solothurn. From 1884 to 1886, he received irregular lessons from Swiss painter Frank Buscher (1828–1890). In the autumn of 1886, Amiet attended the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Munich. The following year, Amiet met Giovanni Giacometti, who was to be a lifelong friend. In 1888, Amiet visited the Internationale Kunstausstellung in Munich. There, he was particularly impressed by the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage and James MacNeill Whistler.
This prompted him to continue his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris, which Amiet attended from 1888 to 1891. There, Amiet worked under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Tony Robert-Fleury and Gabriel Ferrier. While in Paris, Amiet also met Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis and other Nabis artists, though Amiet's own work of this period was mostly influenced by Impressionism. In 1892, Amiet was advised to visit Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he met Émile Bernard, Armand Séguin and Roderic O’Conor, as well as seeing the works of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin at first hand. This brief period had a decisive effect upon his work, leading to such Synthetist paintings as Breton Spinner (1893). Amiet belonged to a group of Swiss artists, including, among others, Max Buri, Wilhelm Balmer and Hans Beat Wieland.