Bernhard Schobinger and Dorothea Prühl came to the world of art jewelry from opposite sides of a divided Europe. Schobinger developed his practice amidst Switzerland’s postwar avant-garde, while Prühl forged her artistic path in East Germany, working initially as a designer before becoming an influential teacher at the art school in Halle, where she had originally trained.
The chronological intersection of their lives highlights their divergent beginnings. In 1962, the year Prühl graduated from her formal training, a 16-year-old Schobinger was just beginning his art education in Zurich. Although both artists ultimately made jewelry the absolute center of their creative lives, they arrived at remarkably distinct philosophies concerning material, intrinsic value, form, and wearability. Schobinger has famously harvested metal directly out of a city street for use in a necklace and mounted a genuine meteorite into a ring, whereas Prühl delicately carves sculptural forms from the wood of fallen trees. Each artist, through entirely different methodologies, challenges observers to reconsider where true preciousness in jewelry actually resides.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is currently exploring these themes through concurrent, monumental retrospectives: Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger and The Jewelry of Dorothea Prühl. Both exhibitions are on public view through January 3, 2027. Notably, these presentations mark the first United States solo museum exhibitions for either artist.
Tiffany Dubin spoke with the co-curators of both exhibitions—Cindi Strauss, the MFAH’s Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design, and Elizabeth Essner, the museum’s Windgate Foundation Associate Curator of Craft—to discuss the distinct worlds that shaped each artist, how the two shows came to be presented in tandem, and the ways both makers have profoundly expanded the conceptual and physical boundaries of jewelry.
How Did These Two Exhibitions Come About?
According to Cindi Strauss, the genesis of the exhibitions traces back to a major institutional acquisition. When Strauss learned a few years ago that the Rotasa Collection Trust—noted collector Susan Cummins’s esteemed collection of contemporary art jewelry—was being gifted to the MFAH, she immediately began brainstorming the potential exhibitions that could be mounted to honor the collection.
In discussions with Susan Cummins, Strauss proposed two anchor solo exhibitions to kick off the multi-year celebration of the acquisition. Strauss had long wanted to organize a dedicated retrospective for Bernhard Schobinger. With the museum soon housing more than 30 pieces of his jewelry across both the Rotasa and Helen Williams Drutt Collections, mounting a Schobinger exhibition became a logical choice. Simultaneously, because the Rotasa Collection houses the largest holding of Dorothea Prühl’s jewelry in the United States, Prühl emerged as the ideal companion subject.
While staging both exhibitions concurrently was initially a matter of scheduling logistics within the museum’s calendar, Strauss and Elizabeth Essner quickly realized the profound intellectual dialogue that would emerge by placing the two artists side by side.
Although their aesthetic languages are remarkably different, their practices share striking parallels: a singular, uncompromising dedication to their work, and a deep reliance on place and personal experience to inform their jewelry. Furthermore, both artists came of age during tumultuous historical eras in Europe, and although their daily lives unfolded under vastly different sociopolitical conditions, those historical pressures indelibly imprinted their creative outlooks.
How Did the Worlds in Which They Developed Shape Their Work?
Elizabeth Essner notes that while Prühl and Schobinger were not separated by vast geographical distances, the cultural and political climates of their formative years were worlds apart. Prühl was born in 1937 in Breslau, Germany—a city that is now Wrocław, Poland. Consequently, the devastation of World War II and the realities of life within the German Democratic Republic (GDR) profoundly shaped the course of her life, leaving a lasting imprint even decades after German reunification in 1990. Essner points out that it is impossible to fully untangle Prühl’s artistic achievements from her daily experiences living and working behind the Iron Curtain.
At the same time, Prühl is an artist who looks resolutely inward for inspiration, remaining entirely unconcerned with overt political messaging. Instead, she maintains a much broader, long-term view of civilization and of the enduring ways jewelry has always articulated what it means to be human.
Schobinger, conversely, was born in Zurich in January 1946 and came of age alongside the vibrant cultural movements that erupted across Western Europe in the postwar era. He was thrust directly into the world of avant-garde art when he enrolled in Zurich’s School of Applied Arts. During his early years, he was heavily drawn to the geometric Concrete Art championed by Swiss artists Max Bill and Richard Paul Lohse, which served as an early foundational inspiration for his jewelry designs.
However, Schobinger’s artistic trajectory shifted radically during the 1970s. Finding ideological kinship with the burgeoning international punk movement, he forged his own distinct, rebellious artistic vision. Detritus, industrial scrap, and discarded throwaway objects rapidly became his primary materials as he sought to aggressively redefine the core essence of what jewelry could be.
Bridging Paradoxes: Craftsmanship, Philosophy, and Found Objects
Schobinger has frequently described himself as "a human paradox." His jewelry routinely pairs rigorous, traditional Swiss goldsmithing techniques with raw, unconventional elements like broken glass, industrial saw blades, and urban detritus. His theoretical framework has also been shaped by thinkers such as philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whose influential 1975 book Against Method aggressively challenged the notion of fixed, immutable rules within science and structured thought.
Cindi Strauss emphasizes that Feyerabend’s writings, combined with Schobinger’s lived experiences, are essential keys to understanding his studio practice. Yet, Strauss cautions that a casual glance at the work misses vital layers of complexity. For instance, Schobinger incorporates found objects that can initially make his jewelry appear unwearable, uncomfortable, or even physically dangerous. Despite this aggressive aesthetic, every single piece is engineered to be eminently wearable, and his commitment to that wearability remains paramount.
Equally crucial is Schobinger’s unwavering dedication to high-level craftsmanship. He is a rigorously trained goldsmith, and the strength of those technical foundations is visible in every object he creates, particularly in functional details like intricate clasps and hidden structural connections.
Simplicity, Form, and Materiality in Prühl’s Practice
By contrast, Prühl’s jewelry—crafted primarily from carved wood, titanium, and various metals—frequently appears disarmingly simple. Yet, Elizabeth Essner stresses that this outward simplicity is deeply deceptive. Prühl produces only a handful of finished pieces each year, pouring a vast body of knowledge and rigorous consideration into every single stage of the making process. She contemplates not merely how her chosen materials will embody her desired forms, but also how her pieces will sound when worn, how they will move with the body, and, most importantly, how they will make the wearer feel.
This relentless dedication yields jewelry that feels so organic and innate that it appears as though it has simply always existed. Prühl is fundamentally driven by the pure creation of form—a direct legacy of her rigorous training at the renowned Burg Giebichenstein in Halle (Saale), Germany. When Prühl graduated, form was her primary focus, and it remains the central anchor of her artistic practice today. Prühl has often remarked that if she ever finds herself needing to verbally explain a piece of jewelry, she immediately knows that the form itself is not strong enough.
Pivotal Works and Defining Moments
When guiding visitors through the adjacent exhibition galleries, the curators highlight specific touchstone works that encapsulate each artist’s journey. For Schobinger, the piece titled NYC 1980 stands out as a pivotal milestone. Created during a period when Schobinger was constantly commuting between his home in the quiet Swiss village of Richterswil and the raw underground punk scenes of Zurich, London, Berlin, and New York City, the necklace features chunks of metal that the artist literally pried out of the asphalt on West Broadway in Manhattan.
The resulting necklace functions simultaneously as a protective amulet and modern armor, retaining subtle geometric traces of his early exposure to Concrete Art. A close inspection reveals nearly invisible twists of wire holding the heavy metal chunks together—connections that are intact but barely sufficient to sustain the piece. It captures Schobinger’s urgency to encapsulate the explosive, volatile energy of an era, fully aware that the moment might be too fragile to endure.
Prühl’s working methods reflect a similarly intense, singular relationship with her materials and environments. While she constructs her metal jewelry within her studio space in Halle, she travels three hours north to carve her wooden jewelry in the remote forests of her rural youth. Working entirely alone in a simple farmhouse lacking running water and relying on a single heat source, she gathers a limitless supply of wood from fallen trees. Works like Flowers from Augustenberg (Blumen aus Augustenberg) from 1989—named after her wooded hamlet—serve as a tender, poetic ode to her formative years, capturing the delicate spirit of the natural landscape in a carved wooden garland.
The Long Arc of Creativity
Reflecting on the extensive process of organizing these landmark exhibitions, Strauss notes that her quarter-century of working with international jewelry artists has been profoundly deepened by engaging with Prühl and Schobinger. Their absolute dedication above all else, their daily discipline, and their unyielding commitment to their craft demonstrate what it truly means to be a master artist over a lifelong career.
Essner echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that while jewelry frequently serves as a vessel for our most intimate personal stories, Schobinger and Prühl elevate the medium to address humanity’s deepest philosophical questions. Through incorporating a piece of a meteorite into a ring—as seen in his 1993 Meteor Iron Ring—Schobinger connects the wearer to a cosmic timeline stretching far beyond human civilization. Meanwhile, Prühl honors viewers with quiet, profound meditations on birds in flight, flowers, and butterflies. Though these subjects initially appear modest or mundane, taking the time to truly observe Prühl’s carved interpretations invites a profound humbling before the quiet miracles of the natural world.
