WATER & LIGHT

MODERN architecture calls for outsize windows, yet neither artists nor architects have taken much advantage of this open invitation to stained-glass decoration. One notable exception: the 38-ft.-square window in St. Ann's Church at Normandy, Mo. (TIME, Dec. 15). A standout example of stained glass out of church is Max Hunziker's window for the Zurich Cantonal Hospital. Hunziker's creation, more than 18 by 11 ft., lights a spiral staircase leading to the hospital's main auditorium. It will soon be complemented by another window on an opposite staircase. The themes of the two windows: "Water and Light" (opposite) and "Earth and Air."

Max Hunziker, 51, is an intense, self-taught artist whose chief love is Byzantine and Romanesque art. In his stained glass he tries to mirror the restrained magnificence of his anonymous idols. Restricting himself to 20 hues of glass--chosen from 15,000 commercially available--he assembles his windows with an artisan named Karl Ganz, then paints them in grisaille (i.e., grey glaze). The whole job (composing, assembling, painting, firing, leading) takes up to three years, and only when the glass is finally installed can the artist see his work as a living entity, vibrating with the light of day.

In Hunziker's "Water and Light" window, the ship at center right holds "a nameless group of suffering people who hope to travel upriver to well-being." Along the winding course ahead are a doctor and patient, a family bathing, nurses drying a sheet before a fire, a good Samaritan carrying a patient across a bridge, and a shepherd with his flock. At the source of the stream a couple roams blissfully in the paradise they have found at journey's end. In its quiet mixture of suffering, hope and joy, the window is altogether appropriate to the hospital setting. The wet light that falls through the colored glass is suggestive less of tears than of cleansing rain.

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