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“July 25, 2025
Dear Rudy,
Your life's work is impressive, as hardly a day has gone by in the last half century without you creating at least one work. It is reasonable to assume that your artistic work has given you a deep sense of satisfaction, which in turn has enabled you to seek and find your own path independently of external successes.
An art historian looking for criteria to find their way through the abundance of visual messages will notice that your work can be divided into two periods: The first "Othmar" period and the second period, in which you gave your creations your full proper name along the way.
The Othmar period can also be divided into phases, the first of which was when you familiarized yourself with the craft side of art by copying the great masters, in the manner of students at the academies. In your case, the great masters were the Impressionists, whom you encountered from an early age, as your family had its roots in Winterthur and you were connected to the artistic charisma of this city through family ties.
Then came the move to the USA and the phase in which your bourgeois life was finally turned upside down. At that time, you responded to the hardship that beset you with very dark images - Dark Period. The image of the cross or even the crucified man appeared quite frequently in them, a far cry from the cheerful beginnings in the wake of Impressionism.
With the start of the new millennium, the artist Rudy Ernst found himself and said goodbye to Othmar. Now you express yourself confidently with the means of surrealism, one of the great visual languages of the 20th century. You are also familiar with Dada from the Cabaret Voltaire, and in small and large formats you create whatever your imagination - in a waking or semi-waking state - tells you.
The titles with which you characterize your paintings and drawings are important. They reveal your pronounced linguistic talent, which allows you to deal with the world through the means of irony.
You are constantly experimenting, which is particularly evident in your sculptures. In painting, too, you cross boundaries and produce "Computer Aided Art" thirty years before digital reality (if you want to leave this "contradictio in adjecto" alone) becomes our everyday life.
Dear Rudy, you have every reason to look back on your artistic life's work with satisfaction. Your nature will ensure that you continue to combine this retrospection with an outlook into the future. I sincerely wish you all the best for both!
In friendship, Lukas”
Lukas Gloor(One of the leading Swiss Art Historians)
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“Traditional and Modern -- A Word from the Publisher
Not often do we meet an artist who creates so much work in a single year, as shown in this 2013 Work Catalog (Raisonné) by Rudy Ernst, who has mostly been working outside of the limelight for over thirty years. At age 76, Ernst now presents his recent creations that are reflective of the complexity between the subliminal and the mind, much like the world around us has become.
While Rudy Ernst’s Sculptures may remind us of Giacometti, who grew up a mere three miles from where Ernst spent the first twenty years of his life, Ernst’s small and large sculptures never attempt to imitate the famous Swiss sculptor, but rather ooze that feeling of a shared natural environment of the Swiss mountains. Ernst’s Space Sculptures reflect the human endeavor to break out of our Planet Earth into the weightlessness of space. His Abstract Impressions may evoke comparisons with some names of the New York School of Expressionist Art, even of impressionist artists, as they were painted in a spontaneous frenzy. Ernst’s works of Computer Aided Art are unique. The resulting Monoprints originate from his own painted abstractions on canvas, which he then manipulates by computer, using a variety of digital algorithms. Finally, Ernst’s many Surreal Drawings emanate so markedly from his particular mindset, that Dennis Wepman, the Art Critic, once portrayed them in Manhattan Art as “Ernst Reinvents Nature.”
Today, where the concept of Beauty and Harmony is not highly valued by the contemporary art scene, and where the Modern appears to have forgotten about the Traditional, Rudy Ernst has found ways to combine those notions and incorporate them into his Sculptures, Paintings, Computer Aided Art, and Surreal Drawings.
It is my pleasure to present this Catalog Raisonné of Rudy Ernst’s 2013 works to our readers.
December 21, 2013”
Dr. Faustino QuintanillaDirector, QCC Art Gallery / Museum The City University of New York
