Aleks Weber

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Aleks Weber (born January 21, 1961 in Winterthur ; † April 14, 1994 there ), real name Alex Weber , was a Swiss painter and draftsman. He gained fame throughout Switzerland as one of two main participants in the Winterthur events . On the one hand, his expressive - realistic works can be attributed to the Junge Wilde , but limiting his work to them would fall short.

Life

Alex Weber was born on January 21, 1961 in Winterthur and grew up in the city. From 1979 he worked as a painter and draftsman as well as in the fields of video , object and action art . The painter Benedicht Fivian is considered his mentor and discoverer . Weber was also friends with the artist Claudio Conte , who also died of AIDS a year after him .

In 1981 he was arrested for the first time in the wake of a demonstration against the sale of heavy water systems to Argentina's military junta by Sulzer AG, imprisoned for ten days and then sentenced to imprisonment in a judgment criticized by the left-wing press. A little later he was arrested again in a raid on the youth center - but he was not charged. In 1994 he received a scholarship from the Canton of Zurich .

In November 1984 he was arrested as one of the main suspects as part of the events in Winterthur , and then spent two and a half years in solitary confinement . Among other things, he was accused of an attack on the house of Federal Councilor Rudolf Friedrich . After a month in custody, his girlfriend Gabi S. committed suicide, who had previously been tried to play off against Weber with the help of an anonymous letter of abuse. Since the authorities did not want to risk another suicide, Weber was transferred to a video-monitored cell and later transferred to Regensdorf. There he was infected with AIDS through dirty heroin injections, at least he was tested HIV- positive in Regensdorf .

In September 1986 Weber was sentenced to eight years in prison by the higher court in the first instance . This verdict was criticized in the left-wing press, among other things, as "politically motivated" and was conceded by the Court of Cassation for arbitrary evidence, whereby Weber was released on July 23, 1987. In a renewed trial before the High Court on February 20, 1989, he was sentenced to four years in prison for three bomb attacks. He had already served this sentence during his pre-trial detention. The attack on Friedrich's house could not be proven.

Over 400 works of art were created during his imprisonment and his first exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur also took place during this time. The proposal by Weber's sponsor Fivian to dedicate a solo exhibition to him in the Kunsthalle Winterthur is said to have been rejected by the President of the Kunsthalle's commission on the grounds that otherwise all punks would come there and this was not an option. Also during his imprisonment, he was proposed by the city art commission for a scholarship, against which, however, the free-spirited cultural director and later mayor Martin Haas vetoed.

In 1987, after his release, he received work grants from the Cassinelli Vogel Foundation and the Steo Foundation, both from Zurich. In 1991 he emigrated to New York on a grant from the City of Zurich , where he owned a studio on West Broadway in Lower Manhattan . He returned to Switzerland two years later as the AIDS disease progressed. Aleks Weber died on April 14, 1994 at the age of 33 in his parents' house, his ashes were scattered in the Töss near the "Chinesenbrückli" .

Exhibitions

  • Solo exhibition in Galerie Kunst Zone, Winterthur, 1996.
  • No queremos un trozo de tarta sino todo la pasteleria. Kunstmuseum Olten , 2006.
  • Short and violent. Art atelier Oxyd, Winterthur, 2014.

literature

  • Kathrin Bänziger : A city is in turmoil, Tages-Anzeiger Magazin, February 9, 1985.
  • Erich Schmid : Interrogation and death in Winterthur. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 1986. (Revised and expanded edition 2002.)
  • Jürg Wehren : Aleks Weber. Backward being. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 1998.
  • Benedicht Fivian : The painting of Aleks Weber. In: Winterthur Yearbook , 2003, pp. 60–63.

Movies

  • Interrogation and death in Winterthur. Documentation based on the title of the book by Erich Schmid , Switzerland, 2002, director: Richard Dindo (with numerous pictures by Aleks Weber).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ upcoming exhibitions (61–63). oxyd, 2014, archived from the original on March 16, 2014 ; accessed on September 16, 2019 (original website no longer available).
  2. ↑ Christina Peege: The artist in a new light. In: The Landbote August 15 of 2006.
  3. ↑ Erich Schmid: Interrogation and death in Winterthur. Pp. 10-12.
  4. ↑ Erich Schmid: Interrogation and death in Winterthur. Pp. 60, 144, 198.
  5. ↑ Erich Schmid: Interrogation and death in Winterthur. P. 206.
  6. ↑ Erich Schmid: Interrogation and death in Winterthur. P. 98.
  7. ^ Marcy Goldberg: Interrogation and death in Winterthur (Richard Dindo). In: Cinema. Retrieved March 16, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Erich Schmid: Interrogation and death in Winterthur. P. 149.
  9. ↑ Erich Schmid: Interrogation and death in Winterthur. P. 206.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Aleks
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weber, Alex
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1994
Place of death Winterthur