HR Giger: The Oeuvre Before Alien, 1961-1976Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger was catapulted to international fame in 1979 for designing the inimitable creatures and otherworldly environments that terrified moviegoers in Ridley Scott’s science fiction film Alien. Yet before these iconic creations made him a Hollywood celebrity and won him an Academy Award for visual effects, Giger was already highly regarded in the international art world for his unique painting style and biomechanical dreamscapes. HR. Giger—The Oeuvre Before “Alien” is the first book to document the artist’s lesser-known, but no less impressive, early work. This sumptuously illustrated volume traces Giger’s career from his education as an architect and industrial designer in Zürich to the development of his ink drawing and oil painting technique and his eventual breakthrough as one of the foremost artists of the fantastic realism school. These youthful works formed the groundwork for the artist’s later drawings that earned the esteem of the design industry, the adoration of sci-fi aficionados, and a firm place in the twentieth-century pop culture canon. Featuring many unpublished or rarely available early paintings and drawings and accompanied by an essay by noted art historian Beat Stutzer, this volume also sets Giger’s paintings side by side with predecessors such as Goya, Ensor, and Piranesi. HR Giger—The Oeuvre Before “Alien” illuminates the mind of a visual genius whose first artistic experiments were decades before their time. |
Contents
CONTENTS | 7 |
Giger and the Fantastic in Art | 25 |
The Beauty and Surrealism of HR Giger | 71 |
Copyright | |
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1963 Atomic Children 1972 Landscape Acrylic on paper aesthetic airbrush Alfred Kubin Alien Aquatint on paper Arnold Böcklin Atomic Children India Atomkinder Bacon Baphomet Battista Piranesi 1720-78 beauty Biomechanoids Birth Machine Bündner Kunstmuseum Carceri d'invenzione Château St Children India ink Chur cm A Rh+ cm Exh cm WV Cologne death erotic ETH Zürich exhibition fantastic realism fantasy art fear film Francisco José Friedrich Kuhn gallery Gebärmaschine Germain Giger's Necronomicon Giovanni Battista Piranesi Gruyères Gruyères Fig H. R. Giger Helmhaus Henry Fuseli Hommage horror HR Giger human India ink ink on paper ink on transcop José de Goya Kunsthaus Zürich Kunstmuseum in Chur Li Tobler Museum HR Giger Necronomicon Oil on wood painter paper on wood Paris Passagen pen-and-ink drawing Pfäffikon 1984 portrait Prague Private collection Fig Sergius Golowin sexual surrealism surrealist Switzerland tachism Tages-Anzeiger Taschen Titel Tobler transcop on wood Untitled Vienna woman www.Giger Zürcher