Giuseppe Reichmuth

Giuseppe Reichmuth (born August 14, 1944 in Affoltern am Albis , Canton of Zurich ) is a Swiss painter and artist . He can hardly be classified in any art direction, because he chooses his style depending on the subject. Its only fixed characteristic is humor.

Life

The first and probably still best-known picture, “Zurich Ice Age”, caused a sensation in 1975. In a photorealistic style, it shows a scenario in Zurich that can be understood as apocalyptic : the ice age has broken out, between the historic houses there are ice floes in which a warship is still stuck and penguins are standing around. The image was interpreted among other things, as an indictment allegedly icy on, ossified relationships of the then Zurich, and from the Zurich youth movement and writers as Fritz Zorn denounced.

“Dinosaurs on the Autobahn” was created in a similar style, after which the work became more versatile.

Reichmuth worked in Baden theater projects such as B. the Jerry Dental Kollekdoof with. He got to know Ruedi Häusermann , with whom he subsequently staged many productions and actions, e.g. B. 1985 “Bleu et gentil”: disguised as Zurich police officers, the two artists walked hand in hand through the city.

Also provocative were Reichmuth's picture of a vicious smoking Pope and the action of hanging laundry across the atrium of the university on specially installed clotheslines, with the proverbial motto "washing dirty laundry" as it were.

With Roman Casanova he recently painted "back and forth pictures": One artist painted a picture, this was photocopied in color, then painted over by the other to a greater or lesser extent (but never completely). It was copied again and sent back - from March 1997 to the end of 2003, 83 pictures were created in this way and exhibited together.

useful information

• “Zurich Ice Age” was used as the cover image for the CD “Swiss Kult-Hits” Vol.
• "Zurich Ice Age" became a symbol of the Zurich youth unrest of 1980.
• The "dinosaur on the freeway" made it to the USA, where it could be found on posters, T-shirts and a house wall.
• According to Reichmuth, further pictures in the style of “Zurich Ice Age” were planned, which would have applied the same principle to other cities, but this was not implemented.

literature

• Rea Brändle , Thomas Bodmer (authors); Peter Zimmermann (photos); Stephan Witschi, Roger Zoller (ed.): Giuseppe Reichmuth . Offizin, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-907496-43-4 .

Web links

• Entry in Sikart.ch of the Swiss Institute for Art Research
• Short biography