Since 2025, the library left by the artist Aldo Walker, which consists mainly of art theory publications, has been housed in the Art Library of the Sitterwerk Foundation.
The Lucerne artist Aldo Walker (1938-2000) is one of the most interesting figures on the Swiss art scene at the end of the 20th century. In 1969, he was involved in Harald Szeemann's legendary exhibition «When attitudes become form» at the Kunsthalle Bern, which focused on the processual nature of American and European post-war art in the year following the student unrest. Together with John M Armleder, he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1986. In 1987, he was awarded the Lucerne Art Prize. In 1989, he curated the extraordinary exhibition «Lettre d'images par Aldo Walker» at the Helmhaus in Zurich. The book and the then current debates on art theory played a central role in his work. From 1987-1998, Aldo Walker taught at the Zurich School of Design. He taught the theory and practice of visual communication and drawing. Aldo Walker left behind a body of work that was experimental to the end and always concerned with the boundaries of art, including writings on art theory.
From March 10 to May 28, 2006, the retrospective «Kunst überfordern - Aldo Walker» was on view at the Lucerne Museum of Art. The Edition Fink (Zurich) published the monograph Aldo Walker (1938-2000): Geschichte und Lektüre seiner Kunst. In addition to early conceptual works, the exhibition included objects and typefaces from the 1970s as well as paintings from the last two decades of his life. The relationship of art to life-world issues plays an important role in his work. Walker investigated, for example, how systematic art has to be in order to be perceived as such and, conversely, how artists can avoid the danger of hermeticism. Every art proposal, writes Aldo Walker in one of his texts, is tied to the time of its birth. In his case, it is the late 1960s, a time when artists were questioning individual authorship and thus also the idea that a work of art is the product of individual activity. During the preparations for the exhibition, his last studio was closed. I looked through the artist's written legacy, searched for an archive to house it and took over his library from the family in order to preserve it for research. We stamped all the publications from his estate with «Ex Libris Aldo Walker (1938-2000)». His personal papers, manuscripts and conceptual works are now accessible in the art archive of the Swiss Institute for Art Research in Zurich. The Sitterwerk Foundation's art library is now the ideal place for the book collection left behind by the artist. An inventory of the publications from Aldo Walker's estate can be viewed here online as well as on site in the art library.