Staumauer, Pigniu

In the small mountain community of Pigniu/Panix in the Grisons Anterior Rhine Valley, a dam wall was built at the back of the large valley basin in 1989. Since September 1999, the sober wall has shown itself to hikers from a completely different side. Already at the first hairpin bends to Pigniu towards the reservoir you will see white and black squares. Then suddenly a huge bright blue tower flashes out from between the fir trees, behind it pawns from a chess set, lying and standing. As you continue walking, the image disappears. But then heads appear, a whole army, with huge caps on their heads, surmounted by as many pointed bayonets. And then you see: From right to left, Russian soldiers who are 12 meters tall march in a long column over the dam wall towards the tower.

This is exactly the goal that the Engadin-born artist Martin Valär wanted to achieve with his monumental work. For a long time, he had dreamed of turning a dam into a painting - despite the special difficulties that arise from the dimensions and the construction method alone. The Panix Wall was almost ideal in this respect. Built as a gravity wall with a height of 50 m and a crown length of 240 m, it offered a huge concrete screen.

The planned start of work in March 1999 had to be postponed to May due to the large amount of snow and closed access. In about 25 working days, Martin Valär realized his 80 m wide and 40 m high picture with the simplest of means. He abseiled over the Wall over 300 times with a paint bucket and roller. Using huge templates, the soldiers were sketched on the wall and the fallen "pawns" were placed with the help of a sophisticated system. On July 3, 1999, the Russian soldiers received their white trousers. For this alone, Valär had to abseil over the wall 27 times. For 20 to 30 years, the exterior dispersion paint is supposed to defy the weather conditions.

The idea for the monumental painting was the chess game, the popular game with a military twist in Russia: In 1799, the Russian general Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov marched with his army from Elm to Pigniu over the Panix Pass while retreating from the French. The weakened army was so affected by the arduous route and the early snow that it arrived in Pigniu in a severely decimated state, where it plundered the entire village.
On the dam wall, Suvorov is depicted as a tottering blue tower - this general who had been pushed back and forth with his army by the rulers of the time as if on a war chess field. His fallen soldiers are memorialized by the chess pawn pieces: the surviving Russian soldiers march over the wall in an almost endless row.

For Martin Valär, one thing is important: "You should go to the people with art, not the other way around. A picture without a viewer is meaningless. My art is intended to stimulate the individual to think. It is a process that begins in the artist and triggers something in the viewer through the medium of image. Art can and should also be transient."

(Text transacted by: Regiun Surselva)