A monumental work from the Engadin Collection by Jürg Kaufmann

The Guardian, seen from the air. Storm crossing from Bregaglia into the Engadin, cloud tearing across the summit pyramid, the lake far below gone to slate. For a few minutes the mountain becomes pure architecture: black rock, white violence, weather breaking on the western gate of the valley. Then it passes. Piz da la Margna has stood through every such hour for as long as anyone has watched it. Segantini painted this light. Nietzsche walked beneath it. The mountain was here before them, and remains.

Height — 3,159 m (10,364 ft)
First Ascent — June 1857, J. Caviezel with Krättli, Robbi and Zaun
Coordinates — 46°22′55″ N, 9°43′48″ E
Range — Bernina Range, on the threshold of Bregaglia, Engadin, Graubünden

The Moment

Stormy Margna was made from a helicopter on the return flight from a shoot in Val Bregaglia. The day had been forecast out — most crews would have stayed on the ground. The pilot and I have flown together for many years, and we went on instinct. The Bregaglia work was already a gift; the Margna was the second one. On the way home, weather closing around the summit, we stopped in the air and held position long enough to make this frame. A few minutes later it was gone.

These are the conditions the Margna is known for, and almost no one photographs them — most leave the lake when the light turns. The work captures the mountain in the form the Engadiners themselves know best: not in postcard light, but in the weather that has shaped its reputation.

A Valley That Has Drawn Artists for a Century and a Half

This is the landscape that held Giovanni Segantini until his death on the Schafberg, where Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Also sprach Zarathustra across the summers of the 1880s, where Alberto Giacometti grew up in the shadow of the Bregaglia, where Gerhard Richter has worked for over thirty years. The Margna is the visual constant across all of them — the peak in the background of Segantini's Mezzogiorno sulle Alpi, the mountain Nietzsche walked beneath each afternoon, the form Richter has returned to again and again.

The work continues a tradition. Time will decide the rest.

Limited to 15 signed originals and 2 Artist's Proofs — across all formats and dimensions. Once complete, no further originals will be produced.

Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag. Diasec face-mount and alternative substrates available on request. Available up to 400 cm width — a scale at which the mountain enters the room rather than hangs on the wall.

Individually produced and hand-signed. Framing consultation and large-format installation guidance included. Each original accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity.

Works by the artist are installed at the Grace La Margna, St. Moritz — the hotel that takes its name from this mountain

INQUIRE ABOUT THIS WORK