René Groebli was born on October 9 in Zurich, Switzerland in 1927. In the 1940s he stud­ied with the famous pho­tog­ra­pher Hans Finsler. In 1949, he secured his place among post-​war European artists with his iconic port­fo­lio: Magie der Schiene (Magic of the Railroad). In the early 1950s, Groebli worked as a pho­tog­ra­pher for LIFE, Picture Post, Illustrated, Time, and other inter­na­tional mag­a­zines, then opened a stu­dio for adver­tis­ing and indus­trial pho­tog­ra­phy, which he main­tained until his retirement. 

In 1954, Das Auge der Liebe (The Eye of Love) is a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs of his wife taken dur­ing their hon­ey­moon and offers a poetic look at nude photography.

Recognized as a mas­ter of color, he prac­tices all gen­res and fol­lows the styl­is­tic and tech­ni­cal evo­lu­tions of pho­tog­ra­phy over five decades, in an approach where the avant-​garde mixes with a more clas­si­cal aes­thetic. In 1981, the pho­tog­ra­pher sold his col­lec­tion and moved to Provence where he redis­cov­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ties of black and white in his per­sonal work. He con­tin­ues to exhibit and pub­lish his work and in 1999 the Kunsthaus art museum in Zurich pre­sented a ret­ro­spec­tive of his pho­tographs from 1946 to 1996. 

Groebli cur­rently resides in Switzerland.