Fritz Glarner and Georges Vantongerloo at the Rose Fried Gallery in Manhattan Fritz Glarner (Swiss by birth but a U.S. citizen from 1944) paid Georges Vantongerloo a visit in Paris in late 1952. He brought Rose Fried with him. Vantongerloo wrote to Bill of the Americans’ visit immediately afterwards, while also informing him of Glarner’s intention to visit him soon thereafter during his planned trip to the city of his birth, Zurich.41 He shipped four of his new Plexiglass objects (n° 212, n° 219, n° 221, n° 224) to New York for display. In his reply of December 29, 1952, Bill wrote to Vantongerloo telling him that Glarner had indeed come and seen him while in Zurich. Bill stayed in contact with Glarner and the two would meet again the next year, this time on the other side of the Atlantic, in New York, when Bill was visiting the States. In January 1954, Vantongerloo told Rose Fried that he was very happy to have his work exhibited alongside Glarner’s in her Manhattan gallery.42 Vantongerloo was satisfied with the clippings of reviews that the gallery owner subsequently sent to him.43 It was Bill who organized and curated the first museum show to feature artwork by Glarner in Europe (the exhibition opened in April 1956 at the Kunsthaus Zürich and included works by Josef Albers and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart). The very next month, in May, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held its exhibition 12 Americans that featured several of Glarner’s Relational Paintings.44
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