Erni was commissioned by the Lucerne Museum Fine Arts to organize an exhibit about
Pablo Picasso. The Spanish artist remained grateful for that opportunity to show his art in Switzerland. In 1936 Erni started to work with
abstract art. From 1940 to 1945 he was a soldier in the Swiss army and was engaged as a
camouflage painter because of his experience with large-size murals. In 1948, he was a competitor in the 1948 Summer Olympics'
painting competitions. Between 1950 and 1952 he participated to exhibitions in
Latin America. However, his participation in the
Biennale of
São Paulo was not authorized by
Federal Councillor Philipp Etter. After a stay in
Mauritania and
Guinea he painted African topics. In 1960 he organized with Alfred Pauletto,
Celestino Piatti, Hugo Wetli and Kurt Wirth an exhibition in
Olten about
graphic design and painting. He participated to the 1964
Documenta exhibition in
Kassel, in the
graphic design department. On 15 September 1979 the
Swiss Museum of Transport opened a large personal collection of Erni's works. He realized a 30 meter long mural for the Museum. Erni was very interested in sport and received the
United States Sports Academy award of sport artist of the year in 1989. In 1993 his works were exhibited at the Pence Gallery in
San Francisco. He celebrated his
100th birthday in 2009. His sister, Maria Strebi-Erni (January 14, 1907 – January 29, 2014), died at the age of 107. Erni died on March 21, 2015, aged 106. His first wife,
Gertrud Bohnert, had died in a horse-riding accident. They had one daughter, artist Simone Fornara Erni. With his second wife, Doris, he had a son and two daughters. Apart from the Swiss Museum of Transport, his work is held in several other museums worldwide, including the
Museum of Modern Art, the
American Sport Art Museum and Archives, the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, the
Rose Art Museum, the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the
Minneapolis Institute of Art, the
University of Michigan Museum of Art, the
Dallas Museum of Art, the
Brooklyn Museum, the
Ackland Art Museum, the
Harvard Art Museums, the
Hammer Museum, and the
Cleveland Museum of Art. ==Resources==