Matthias Gnehm

Matthias Gnehm (born July 1, 1970 in Zurich ) is a Swiss comic artist and architect . He lives and works in Zurich.

biography

Gnehm grew up in the canton of Aargau . In 1990 he attended the preliminary course at the Zurich University of Art and Design , completed an internship at Herzog & de Meuron in 1995 and completed his architecture studies at the ETH Zurich in 1999 .

Since 1995 he has published comics together with the Lausanne copywriter and architect Francis Rivolta . In 1998 the duo's first comic book was released: Paul Cork's Taste . The title character can taste colors in a culinary sense and therefore experiences a dangerous and adventurous odyssey. The volume was published by the Swiss publisher Hochparterre and also in France (Editions Hors-Collection).

Together with Rivolta, the parliamentary services commissioned the Bundeshaus comic Rätsel in Weiss in 2002 as a German, French, Italian, Romansh and English edition. The crime story takes place in the National and Council of States Chamber of the Swiss Federal Palace and addresses an art theft.

In 2004 and 2005, his first independent work, Death of a Banker, was published in two volumes. The business crime takes place in Zurich's high finance (a banker wants to cash in on his death with a new type of financial product). The work, at the same time a futuristic design draft for the Zurich lakeside basin in comic form, “caused a sensation”. The media praise “extraordinary ideas”, it is “an exciting, original crime thriller”. Both volumes were also published in France. Gnehm supplemented the comic book with an exhibition including architectural plans and urban planning designs as well as 3D models. “The project was discussed lively. It was never included in the official planning ”.

With the financial crisis in 2008, the comic came up again and Gnehm said: “The crisis showed me that reality is crazier than any fiction”.

In 2008 the comic book Das Selbstexperiment was published . The science thriller, set in Zurich, tells of a scientist who is looking for an active ingredient against jealousy and unexpectedly finds out how human consciousness works. The work was based on a stay at the Collegium Helveticum in 2007/2008 and translated his research on emotions “in a captivating way into the comic genre”. The book was praised as "in the truest sense of the word mind-expanding thriller of high speed and intelligence". Gnehm, known for his opulent, colorful drawing style, published the volume in black and white. Encounters with Japanese drawing students “made me want to work faster, in black and white, rather sketchy,” says Gnehm.

In 2011, Edition Moderne published The Conversion . The comic thematizes in black and white the urban sprawl, puberty, religion and first love in an unspecified Swiss village in the Central Plateau. The 256-page graphic novel The painter of the eternal portrait gallery was published in May 2013 . An unsuccessful painter discovers a small-format original portrait painted by her between old photos of his deceased grandmother. The picture gives him a riddle about his own origins that he can no longer let go. “Softly, almost classically drawn with a pencil, his work with the indicated scenes reads like a nostalgic family novel in many pictures and short bizarre quotes”, according to the Solothurner Zeitung.

style

“I don't think any subject is too complex for comics,” says Gnehm. So he immerses himself deeply in what is happening and the society around him, "that is important (...), that is perhaps the influence of architecture, it is a social art, without society the architect cannot do anything".

In terms of drawing and narration, Gnehm can draw on a variety of means that have been praised by the media. “This virtuoso use of the variety of narrative means (...) combines different drawing styles, each representing a different narrative form”, Gnehm draws “sensitive and at the same time impasto coloring (...) as black and white and cleverly coarse”.

“His pictures are of sophisticated simplicity (...) black and white expressive eruptions and a tricky children's drawing style at the same time”. In “Paul Cork's Taste”, the media recognize “ pictures reminiscent of the paintings of Pierre Bonnard or Édouard Vuillard ”.

Works

• Will be picked up on ... (Matthias Gnehm and Francis Rivolta). IG Comic Schweiz, TöppferWare 1 collection 1995
• Rendez-vous (Matthias Gnehm and Francis Rivolta). IG Comic Schweiz, TöppferWare 2 collection 1996
• The death of Sisyphus (Matthias Gnehm and Francis Rivolta). IG Comic Schweiz, TöppferWare 3 collection 1996
• Paul Cork's Taste. An adventure in color. Zurich, Hochparterre Verlag 1998
• Riddle in White (Matthias Gnehm and Francis Rivolta). NZZ Libro 2002
• Blanc Mystère (Matthias Gnehm and Francis Rivolta). Editions Payot 2002
• Globi, finally a Hollywood star (Matthias Gnehm and Francis Rivolta). In Strapazin: Globi. Strapazin 2003, ISBN 3-907055-75-6
• Death of a banker. Part one: life is dear. Edition Moderne 2004, ISBN 3-907055-76-4
• Death of a banker. Second part: death is free. Edition Moderne 2005, ISBN 3-907055-92-6
• The self-experiment. Edition Moderne 2008, ISBN 978-3-03731-028-1
• The conversion. Edition Moderne 2011, ISBN 978-3-03731-074-8
• The painter of the eternal portrait gallery. Edition Moderne 2013, ISBN 978-3-03731-108-0
• The copied city. Edition Hochparterre 2014, ISBN 978-3-90992-826-2
• Hunger for salt. Edition Moderne 2019, ISBN 978-3-03731-186-8

Movie

• La Mort de Sisyphe. Animated short with Francis Rivolta, 2010

Exhibitions

• 2004 Fumetto, Lucerne (“Death of a Banker”)
• 2004 Architecture Forum Zurich (“Death of a Banker”)
• 2004 Sierre comic festival (“Death of a Banker”)
• 2004 Architekturmuseum Basel (“Death of a Banker”)
• 2008 Fumetto , Lucerne (“The Self-Experiment”)

Awards

• 1992 Comix Festival Fumetto Lucerne
• 1998 studio grant in Krakow, Poland (Federal Office of Culture)
• 1998 “The Most Beautiful Swiss Books” (for “Paul Cork's Taste”, with Francis Rivolta)
• 2001 “Prix coup de coeur”, Comics Festival Sierre (with Francis Rivolta)

Web links

• Matthias Gnehm at Edition Moderne
• Discussion “The Self-Experiment” in the St. Galler Tagblatt 2008

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Il est légitime pour un artiste d'intervenir dans la vie de la cité. Le Temps, December 27, 2008
2. ↑ Architectural vision as a comic. Mittelland Zeitung, June 14, 2004.
3. ↑ The business of death. 20 minutes, July 5, 2005.
4. ↑ Dreamlike but grueling. Darmstädter Echo, August 11, 2005.
5. ↑ City visions: high-rise buildings in the lake basin. Tages-Anzeiger, November 22, 2010.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Intricate convolutions of the brain. St. Galler Tagblatt, August 4, 2008.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Science as a thriller. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 16, 2008.
8. ↑ Grafic Novels: an art between image and word . Solothurner Zeitung, May 11, 2013.
9. ^ The Title 05/2008
10. ↑ Who is who? TITEL culture magazine, Thomas Wörtche , October 4, 2008.
11. ↑ Comic Guide
12. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from December 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.