HR Giger

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HR Giger (2012)
Signature "H Giger"

HR Giger (* February 5, 1940 in Chur ; † May 12, 2014 in Zurich ; authorized to reside in Basel and Nesslau ), artist name of Hans Rudolf Giger , addressed in his home country with the typical Hansruedi . called, was a Swiss visual artist , painter and Oscar winner .

biography

Electric bass and two electric guitars in Giger design

HR Giger was born as the son of the pharmacist Hans Richard Giger and his wife Melly Giger in Chur, Grisons. As a child he was very shy and reserved. He was raised Catholic, which later influenced his art. After graduating from high school and training as an architectural draftsman, he studied interior architecture and industrial design at the Zurich School of Applied Arts from 1962 . During his apprenticeship he made his first ink pen drawings (“Atomkinder”), after which he published his works in the underground newspapers “ Hotcha! »,« Clou »,« Agitation »and« The Cthulhu News »published by Robert A. Fischer . Nevertheless, he remained largely unknown for some time, which only changed after 1966, when he successfully completed his studies and established himself as an interior designer. He worked as an employee of the well-known Swiss designer Andreas Christen in Zurich on an office furniture program for the Knoll-International company , which gave him the status of a respected interior designer, which resulted in the first exhibition of his works a little later. He did not give up his job at Andreas Christen yet and continued to work as a designer and interior designer, which did not prevent him from remaining artistically active. Over the next two years he created numerous sculptures and pictures such as “Gebärmaschine”, “Astreunuch” or “Suitcase Baby”, with which he finally became known and commercially successful after another exhibition in Zurich. As early as 1968 he was working exclusively as an artist and filmmaker. As a scene and costume designer , he shaped well-known films such as Alien (1979) and Species (1995) with his style . Giger won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1980 for his work on Alien , and his style became known to a wider audience. With his dark drawings, dark record covers and creations he shaped the aesthetics of the death and black metal scene for decades . The record cover KooKoo for Debbie Harry and the cover Brain Salad Surgery for Emerson, Lake and Palmer are also considered milestones.

Giger was in a relationship with the Swiss actress Li Tobler for several years , who committed suicide on Whit Monday 1975. In 1979 Giger married Mia Bonzanigo; the marriage ended after a year and a half. Mia Bonzanigo inspired Giger for the series Erotomechanics, among other things . He married his second wife, Carmen Maria Scheifele Giger, in 2006. Giger's friends included personalities such as the artist Friedrich Kuhn and Timothy Leary .

Giger's work can be assigned to Surrealism ; Compared to one of the most famous representatives of this style, Salvador Dalí , it becomes clear how different Giger's perspective on the world was. Influences of Fantastic Realism are also derived from friendship with representatives of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism such as Ernst Fuchs . Miodrag Djuric was valued by Giger. The recurring theme of his works is the concept of biomechanoids , which he coined , for his style to merge the creaturally- organic with the technical-mechanical, in a disturbing to morbid interplay with sexual allusions in a gloomy, surrealistic subject . In addition to his important painting work, he also designed graphics , sculptures and furniture.

HR Giger lived and worked in Zurich-Seebach . He died on May 12, 2014 in a Zurich hospital from injuries sustained in a fall. His grave is in the Gruyères cemetery in the canton of Friborg .

Works

HR Giger 2005 on the 2nd Zurich Film Exchange

drawings

From 1960, Giger's ink drawings were published in school newspapers and underground magazines. Drawings such as the series Atomkinder (1963–64) gave an idea of ​​what was slumbering in Giger.

painting

Giger's first paintings were created from 1966, most of them in oil. When Giger discovered the spray gun ( airbrush ) for himself in 1972 , this became his preferred way of painting. In the following 20 years, around 600 paintings were made with ink and acrylic paint, some of them over four meters wide. In the early 1990s, Giger gave up painting in order to devote himself entirely to three-dimensional work.

Sculptures

Female torso by HR Giger, 2009 in the garden of the Bündner Kunstmuseum

The first sculptural works were created in the mid-1960s. At that time Giger preferred to work with polyester, e.g. B. 1968, when he created costumes for the Swiss film Swissmade by Fredi M. Murer . Objects made of bronze, aluminum and other materials were also created later. In the 1990s, Giger created the twelve signs of the zodiac as biomechanoids for his Zodiac fountain . From the time Giger stopped painting, one of his concerns was to convert some of his earlier pictures into three-dimensional dimensions, including the birthing machine and passages . In the period from 1996 to 2007, a large number of Giger's drawings were converted into three-dimensional sculptures by Ronald Brandt. He was Giger's personal assistant. Many of these sculptures can be seen in Giger's Museum and the Giger Cafe.

Furniture

The best-known furniture Giger are originally for the film Dune designed Harkonnen -Furniture. He then founded a furniture making studio with Conny Fries , where the Harkonnen Capo chair with three skulls piled on top of each other was created. Giger also designed tables, mirrors, lamps and other objects such as B. a microphone stand for Jonathan Davis from Korn .

Film design

Record and CD covers / video clips

Floh de Cologne: Cover picture for Mummies - cantata for rock band by HR Giger

Computer games

Museum, bars and memorials

The first Giger bar was opened in Tokyo in 1988, but it was closed again after a few years. In 1992, the second Giger bar was opened in Giger's birthplace, Chur . In the New York discotheque The Limelight , the HR Giger Room existed from 1998 until the discotheque was closed in 2002 .

In 1998 the HR Giger Museum was opened in Gruyères , Canton of Friborg , Switzerland . The museum is located in St-Germain Castle, which Giger bought in 1997. The museum houses Giger's private collection of fantastic art (including works by Günter Brus , Ernst Fuchs , Gottfried Helnwein , Arnulf Rainer , Franz Ringel , Thuri Werkner ) and a collection of his own works. In 2003 the museum in Gruyères was expanded to include a Giger bar.

In November 2015 the "Gigerplatz" was inaugurated in Chur, a small square in the immediate vicinity of Giger's birthplace on Storchengasse. A memorial plaque was attached to the house

bibliography

  • 1971: ARh +
  • 1974: Passages
  • 1976: HR Giger near Sydow-Zirkwitz (exhibition catalog)
  • 1977: HR Giger's Necronomicon 1, new edition 2004, large format A3, hardcover, ISBN 978-3-89082-519-9
  • 1981: HR Giger's New York City
  • 1984: Retrospective 1964–1984 (exhibition catalog)
  • 1985: HR Giger's Necronomicon 2, new edition 1996, large format A3, hardcover, ISBN 978-3-89082-520-5
  • 1985: HR Giger's Necronomicon 1 + 2, limited collector's edition with inlaid lithograph, ISBN 978-3-89082-555-7
  • 1988: HR Giger's Biomechanics, new edition 2005, large format A3, hardcover, ISBN 978-3-89082-871-8
  • 1989: Giger's Alien. Film design. 20th Century Fox. 5th edition. Edition C, Zug / Switzerland 2002, ISBN 978-3-89082-528-1 .
  • 1991: HR Giger ARh +, ISBN 3-8228-1317-6 (not identical to the book of the same name from 1971)
  • 1992: Sketches 1985
  • 1993: Watch Abart '93 (exhibition catalog)
  • 1995: Species Design
  • 1996: HR Giger's Filmdesign, hardcover, ISBN 978-3-89082-583-0
  • 1996: www HRGiger com
  • 1996: Visioni di fine millennio (exhibition catalog, limited luxury version including SHINE inthecentre CD album)
  • 1998: Monsters from the ID
  • 1998: The Mystery of San Gottardo
  • 2002: Icons «HR Giger»
  • 2004: Le Monde Selon HR Giger (exhibition catalog)
  • 2005: HR Giger in Prague (exhibition catalog)
  • 2005: HR Giger's Necronomicon 1 + 2, softcover, ISBN 978-3-89996-539-1
  • 2006: Giger in Vienna (exhibition catalog, ISBN 3-901247-15-7 )
  • 2007: HR Giger, The Creation Before Alien (exhibition catalog)
  • 2007: HR Giger, Escultura, Gràfica i Disseny (exhibition catalog)
  • 2013: HR Giger - Alien Diaries, ISBN 978-3-905929-45-4 .

Others

Giger played a key role in the painting of a special edition of the Ibanez Iceman, an electric guitar . In the paintwork, he again implemented the topic of biomechanics. Absinthe Brevans was launched in 2007 with a label from HR Giger.

“HR Giger has influenced the tattoo scene like no other artist . Even more: with the biomechanoid he invented, he even established his own tattoo style . "

- Heath home

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1967: Together with Urban Gwerder, the Poetenz – Show , a poetry performance
  • 2006: "Giger in Vienna" ( Kunst Haus Wien , May 24th to October 1st, 2006)
  • 2007: HR Giger - The Creation Before «Alien» ( Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, June 30th to September 9th, 2007)
  • 2008: HR Giger - Abfalls ( Spandau Citadel in Berlin, June 29 to September 14, 2008), together with works by Horst Janssen and Guido Sieber
  • 2009: HR Giger - Kunst.Design.Film ( German Filmmuseum in Frankfurt / Main, January 21 to July 26, 2009)
  • 2009: HR Giger - HR GIGER retrospective (Sala Kubo-Kutxa, San Sebastian in Spain, October 15, 2009 to January 6, 2010)
  • 2010: HR Giger - Film Design Retrospective (Tampere Art Museum, Finland, January 30th to April 5th, 2010)
  • 2011: HR Giger - Dreams and Visions (Kunst Haus Wien, March 10 to June 26, 2011)
  • 2013: HR Giger - The Art of Biomechanics ( Lentos Art Museum Linz , September 5th to 29th, 2013)
  • 2014: HR Giger - The Zeitgeist of the 20th Century (Sansvoix modern art gallery in Leipzig, March 12th to June 29th, 2014)

literature

Honor

In 2013, Giger was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. In 2014 he was awarded the Vincent Prize for his life's work .

Web links

Commons : Hansruedi Giger  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the SRF, Swiss radio and television HR Giger: His gloomy record covers.
  2. http://www.hrgiger.com/museum/introduction.htm
  3. ^ Website of the SRF, Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen The art of HR Giger still shapes science fiction films today.
  4. Simone Meier : Alien inventor HR Giger has returned forever to the realm of darkness. In: Watson . Fixxpunkt AG, May 13, 2014, accessed on May 13, 2014 .
  5. knerger.de: The grave of HR Giger
  6. ronald-brandt.de: About me
  7. Microphone stand for Korn ( Memento from June 3, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  8. HR Giger Alien Diaries / Alien Diaries
  9. Tattoo magazine , report from June 27, 2014
  10. HR Giger exhibits at the Ars Electronica media art festival in Linz
  11. science fiction awards database - HR Giger . Retrieved November 21, 2017.