Painted reverence for the creation

Biel – Munich – St Moritz

So it didn’t take a long time until Mili definitively returned to painting. Anna gave her a paint box with oil colours and introduced her to a companioned painter who prescient predicted she would either stick at portraits and figure painting or she would go “into fairy tales”. To be able to bring her technical knowledge to perfection, her sister Anna took her along to Munich where she herself had got a big order by a publisher.
Mili’s education in Munich was paid from the estate of her brother Otto who was killed in an accident in the mountains. It was noble-minded left to her by her parents and siblings. Mili’s art teacher in Munich was an Austrian, cordial and encouraging: “You are a human being and I am a human being. You have your opinion and I have my opinion, I only show you the mistakes”. But suddenly – the summer 1914 approached – it was talk about war. Just when the two sisters had returned to Biel, the First World War broke out. All the delightful stuck in memory.
But painting went on, more intensive than ever. Besides orders for children’s portraits Mili began to paint small fairy tale watercolour paintings – elves and mushrooms with children’s faces – similar to the flower fairy tales of the Thurgau painter and children’s book illustrator Ernst Kreidolf, although not influenced by him.
The youngest brother Emil was at that time architect at the building contractor Nicolaus Hartmann in St Moritz, constructor of the Segantini and Engadin museum as well as the manager’s office of the Rhaetian railway in Chur (for this the brother Otto, killed in an accident, who had been a sculptor had created monumental sculptures whose discounted honorariums enabled Mili’s study visit in Munich). This reference and the fact that Anna Haller suffered from breathing problems, lead the family to transfer their place of residence to St Moritz in 1917; hundred years ago. But the mother should not live to see this relocation.

Joyful fairy tales without violence

The publishers Anna worked for, increasingly became aware of Mili so that she got commissions, too. Besides portraits and watercolour paintings she created colouring books of Grimm’s fairy tales, wall paintings and series of postcards. The house at the Via Dimlej built by her youngest brother became the ideal whereabouts for Mili full of tranquillity and inspiration. Increasingly she dedicated herself to the fairy tale theme and painted them in soft hues interpreted in her own way: Joyful fairy tales without violence and cruelty.
But there were repeated caesura in the life of Mili Weber, so when in 1924 her beloved sister and mentor Anna died, “I was of one mind with her”. Such strokes of fate as well as later the quiet years in the Engadin during the Second World War, the death of her father and this of her last brother who had actively supported her let become her creative work yet more intensive.
Therefrom the moving watercolour paintings, the profound picture stories, the fancifully miniatures of these years bear witness but likewise the paintings with which Mili changed walls, ceilings, timbers and furniture, even the house organ and bathrooms into a unique world of fairy tales. This artistic synthesis, just newly maintained by Si-bylla Degiacomi, captures today’s visitors as well and lets gape them like young children about so much quiet grandeur.

HH. The fairy tale world of the Engadin high valley, which has already inspired other famous painters, may have also stimulated Mili Weber. In addition, she was the warmth herself, as well towards the fellow human beings as towards nature and their creatures, which is unmistakably reflected in her work. Following human desire fantasies, she animates the nature with children’s figures in her paintings, initially in the form of personalised flowers.
Later, the little figures with their round heads and big, amazed eyes mutate into actual “little souls”, such as the “Kirschenkinder” or “Das Nixlein Sonnenschein” – mixtures of the most exact observation of nature and native-naive fantasy, innocent dream worlds that retrieve the viewer back to childlike amazement.
Symbols of the wisdom of life as well as characters from history and legends appear in all periods of Mili Weber’s work, such as the “Marienkind” or “Jeanne d’Arc”. Besides individual pictures, she also created groups of pictures (such as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”) or picture stories (such as “Das Märlein vom gefangenen Königssohn”, in which even rock cunts are animated).
Whether drawings, watercolours or oil paintings, whether sculptures and miniatures (for her room-filling, castle-like doll’s house), whether picture- or book texts or music compositions for the house organ – everything that this peculiar and unique artist has created is perfused by her very own, nature-loving worldview, which in the polarities of life always leads from evil to good and from shadow to light. A message that should perhaps be noticed again today!