A Rediscovered Artist from Ascona: The 'Blue Book' of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Founder of Eranos

The Eranos Foundation, in collaboration with and with the support of the Municipality of Ascona, is pleased to invite you, on Thursday, June 11, at 6:00 pm, at the Teatro del Gatto (Via Muraccio, 21) in Ascona, to attend a public lecture on the topic ‘A Rediscovered Artist from Ascona: The Blue Book of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Founder of Eranos’, dedicated to the official launch of Riccardo Bernardini’s book, The Art of the Self. The Blue Book of Eranos Founder Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, with a preface by Fabio Merlini, an introduction by Murray Stein, and an afterword by Her Royal Highness Princess Irene of the Netherlands (Asheville, NC: Zurich Lecture Series XII, Chiron Publications, 2025), published under the auspices of the Eranos Foundation.

The author, Riccardo Bernardini, will be in conversation with Fabio Merlini, President of the Eranos Foundation.

Opening remarks by Giorgio Gilardi, Mayor of Ascona.

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881–1962) was the pioneering founder of the renowned Eranos Conferences, which, from the 1930s onwards, attracted some of the most influential scholars and writers of the 20th and 21st centuries to Ascona, making an extraordinarily significant contribution to the intellectual history of Ticino and Europe. The anthology of her graphic works — a collection of paintings and drawings, most of which are still unpublished, commonly referred to as the “Blue Book” — has been the subject of growing interest from the international art world for over a decade, with exhibitions in some of the world’s most important museums. Today, thanks to the joint support of Ascona Town Council and private sponsors, these works are the focus of a meticulous restoration and enhancement project promoted by the Eranos Foundation, which is renewing their presence within the cultural landscape of the Town and the Canton. The volume The Art of the Self reconstructs, for the first time, its origins, history and significance in relation to the author’s life, her relationship with the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and the evolution of the Eranos cultural project. Convinced that ‘the deepest aspects of human life [...] can only be expressed in images’, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn entrusted the forms of her imagination to the ‘Blue Book’, giving expression to the inner experience of a creative and independent woman. Given the care with which she drew, composed and preserved it, she perhaps hoped that her work would outlive her and, a century later, be rediscovered, studied and contemplated by us: a living testimony to that endless quest for the self, in which the image becomes a place of silent transfiguration of pain.

Riccardo Bernardini, Ph.D., Psy.D., serves as Scientific Secretary of the Eranos Foundation (Ascona, Switzerland), for which he has been supervising the study, restoration, conservation, and museum exhibitions of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s "Blue Book," the corpus of her works of art, for over twenty years. He is director of the Institute of Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy (IPAP, awarded by the European Commission with the EU Health Award—Mental Health 2021), a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and the Association for Research in Analytical Psychology (ARPA), Secretary of the Order of Psychologists of Piedmont, and Member of the Commission for Typical Acts – Protection of Citizens and the Profession of the National Council of Psychologists (CNOP) (Italy). He currently teaches Psychology of Religion as part of the Level II Master’s degree in Religions, Esotericism and New Spiritualities: Developments and Prospects at the University of Pisa. His books include Jung a Eranos. Il progetto della psicologia complessa [Jung at Eranos. The Complex Psychology Project] (2011), Rebirth Symbols in the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte in Florence. From Joachim of Fiore to C.G. Jung (2022), and The Art of the Self. The Blue Book of Eranos Founder Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (Zurich Lecture Series, 2025). He also edited C.G. Jung’s The Solar Myths and Opicinus de Canistris. Notes of the Seminar given at Eranos in 1943 (with G.P. Quaglino and A. Romano, 2014–2015) and Rebirth. Text and notes of the Lecture held at Eranos in 1939 (with F. Merlini, 2020). Together with Fabio Merlini, he is the editorial responsible for the Eranos Yearbooks series, published since 1933.

Admission is free.

Registration is required at info@eranosfoundation.org.

An aperitif will follow, open to all registered participants.

To order a copy of the book, please contact the Eranos Foundation.

For a recent overview of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s graphic work, we recommend the recent articles by Jennifer Higgie, published in the Financial Times, and by Eliza Goodpasture, published in Art in America ("Spotlight" section), as well as the television and radio programs “Prima Ora” on RSI LA 1 and “Alphaville” on RSI Rete Due, respectively.