Well my friends, the great Hans Rudolf Giger is dead at age 74.
He was Swiss, originally from the city of Chur. His father, a chemist, viewed art as a “breadless profession” and strongly encouraged him to enter pharmaceutics. A lot of good it did, for in 1962 at age 22 he moved to Zürich, and studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970.
He made his first paintings as a form of art therapy, since he suffered from night terrors, a condition he suffered from a good portion of his life and which fueled most of his paintings.
He described his own style as ‘biomechanical’, which is pretty spot on. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He met Salvador Dalí, to whom he was introduced by painterRobert Venosa. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary, so if you want to know if Giger ever tripped, there’s your answer, although you do not want a Giger inspired trip unless you’re just a sucked for punishment.
We all know about him and the Alien movies. His art is to horror art what Lovecraft is to horror fiction. So utterly iconic and groundbreaking that everyone who comes after has to contend with him in one way or another.
