Hans Rudolf Giger: dark art

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Hans Rudolf Giger is the person you least want to meet eyes with. He has a piercing, penetrating to the darkest corners of the soul, heavy, gloomy, as if from the underworld itself, look. He seems to see and know more about you than you do.

Biography

Hans Rudolf Giger was born in Switzerland, in a small town called Chur. It happened on February 5, 1940. The world met him not very friendly. The birth was difficult, and the first thing that the future artist's head came into contact with was cold metal tongs.

From childhood, he was aloof and more immersed in his own inner world than in the real world. Even in his early years, his almost manic interest in the dark side of life manifested itself. Since he grew up in picturesque historical places, he had the opportunity to feed his interest by visiting places where criminals were executed. Attempts to look beyond life were manifested in the fact that the future artist dug up long-buried skeletons, and then secretly folded the bones under the bed from his parents.

Once his father, a pharmacist, received a skull as a reward from one of the manufacturers of medicines. Seeingthe son's passion for everything gloomy and fatal, dad presented a gift to his son. Thus, finally fixing the direction of the son's interests. Since then, they have become inseparable - the pencil and Hans Rudolf Giger. Drawings come out from under his pen one by one. After a while, he decides to show his creativity, and since then his formation begins.

Road to Glory

Giger drew his first cycle of drawings at the age of 19 and called it "Atomic Children". Even at the age of five, the future artist saw the results of the tragedy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands of disfigured Japanese, grief for innocent people, a threat hanging over all of humanity. The drawings were published in a magazine published by Hans' home school.

Already in 1969, Hans Rudolf Giger released his posters, after which the first solo exhibitions awaited the artist. But he received real recognition after the release of the Necronomicon posters. Soon a new stage in the artist's career begins. Giger Hans Rudolf, whose gallery of sketches dazzles the imagination of Ridley Scott, is invited to work in Hollywood. He is developing the concept of creatures for the movie "Alien". It is his hand that belongs to the image of a xenomorph. In addition, Giger's monsters become the prototypes for the heroes of the other three parts of the film, as well as Alien vs. Predator. As a reward for his work, the artist received an Oscar in 1980 for Best Visual Effects.

Artist's work

It is not known for certain how the child's relationship with his parents developed. But, judging by the creativity,Hans Rudolf Giger probably received a psychological trauma, which throughout his life he tried in vain to sublimate into creativity. Fixated on the genital phase of development, the artist creates paintings filled with images of the genitals, fetuses in the intrauterine space and disfigured female bodies. Judging by the pictures, the creator had a mild form of schizophrenia and a deep split personality.

Giger's style is greatly influenced by the paintings of Salvador Dali, Ernest Fuchs and Alfred Kubin, whom he met in his youth. Some art historians add that the creator drew most of his inspiration from narcotic hallucinations. There are clear signs of surrealism and magical realism in the works of the Swiss.

Hans Rudolf Giger, whose paintings were created using an airbrush, especially often used brown, marsh, dark blue and metallic colors. By spraying paint on canvases, he skillfully played with the interweaving of living, warm flesh and hard, cold metal. Metal tubes that have dug into the most intimate places of the human body cause pain. Artificial mechanisms put pressure on a person from all sides, compress him, subordinate him to their will. Sounds like the birth of an artist, doesn't it?

Final

In 1998, Giger acquires a chateau in picturesque Switzerland, which today houses a museum and repository of the artist's works. The creator did not develop relationships with women, and in his last days hespent alone. He died corny - from injuries sustained as a result of a fall from the stairs. He took his last breath at a local hospital on May 12, 2014.