Artist of the Day, December 12, 2020: H.R. Giger, a Swiss artist, film director, set designer (#1170)

Hans Ruedi Giger (1940 – 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images of humans and machines connected in cold biomechanical relationships. Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including record album covers, furniture and tattoos.

Giger was born in 1940 in Chur, the largest and easternmost Swiss canton. His father, a pharmacist, viewed art as a "breadless profession" and strongly encouraged him to enter pharmacy. He moved to Zürich in 1962, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970.

Giger's first success was when H. H. Kunz, co-owner of Switzerland's first poster publishing company, printed and distributed Giger's first posters, beginning in 1969.

Giger's style and thematic execution were influential. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their design work on the film Alien. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine contributed to his rise to international prominence. Giger was admitted to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. He is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums including Danzig III: How The Gods Kill by Danzig, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Attack by Magma, Heartwork by Carcass, To Mega Therion by Celtic Frost, Eparistera Daimones and Melana Chasmata by Triptykon, Deborah Harry's KooKoo, and Frankenchrist, by the Dead Kennedys.

In 1998, Giger acquired the Saint-Germain Castle in Gruyères, Switzerland, which now houses the H.R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.

Giger had a relationship with Swiss actress Li Tobler until she died by suicide in 1975. Tobler's image appears in many of his paintings. He married Mia Bonzanigo in 1979; they divorced a year and a half later.

Giger started with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, he worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. He also worked with pastels, markers and ink.

Giger's most distinctive stylistic innovation was that of a representation of human bodies and machines in cold, interconnected relationships, which he described as "biomechanical". His main influences were painters Dado, Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. Giger was also influenced by Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski, and by painters Austin Osman Spare and Mati Klarwein, and was a personal friend of Timothy Leary. He studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art in Zurich from 1962–1965, and made his first paintings as art therapy.

Giger directed a number of films, including Swiss Made (1968), Tagtraum (1973), Giger's Necronomicon (1975) and Giger's Alien (1979).

Giger created furniture designs, particularly the Harkonnen Capo Chair for a film of the novel Dune that was to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Many years later, David Lynch directed the film, using only rough concepts by Giger.

Giger applied his biomechanical style to interior design. One "Giger Bar" appeared in Tokyo, but the realization of his designs was a great disappointment to him, since the Japanese organization behind the venture did not wait for his final designs, and instead used Giger's rough preliminary sketches. For that reason Giger disowned the Tokyo bar. The two Giger Bars in his native Switzerland, in Gruyères and Chur, were built under Giger's close supervision and they accurately reflect his original concepts. At The Limelight in Manhattan, Giger's artwork was licensed to decorate the VIP room, the uppermost chapel of the landmarked church, but it was never intended to be a permanent installation and bore no similarity to the bars in Switzerland.

Giger is often referred to in popular culture, especially in science fiction and cyberpunk. William Gibson (who wrote an early script for Alien 3) seems particularly fascinated: A minor character in Virtual Light, Lowell, is described as having New York XXIV tattooed across his back, and in Idoru a secondary character, Yamazaki, describes the buildings of nanotech Japan as Giger-esque.

Films
• Dune
• Alien
• Alien 3
• Alien Resurrection
• Alien vs. Predator
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
• Poltergeist II: The Other Side
• Killer Condom
• Species
• Species II
• Batman Forever
• Future-Kill
• Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis
• Prometheus
• Alien: Covenant

© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by H. R. Giger or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Mr. H.R. Giger

1966, Shaft 5a

1967, Cthulhu (Genius) iii

1967, Gebärmaschine

1973, ELP ii (Brain Salad Surgery)

1974, Li i

1974, Minon

1974, The Spell ii (detail)

1975, Passage ii

1976, Necronom iv

1976, Master and Margerita

1976, Necronom i

1976, Necronom iii

1976, Necronom v

1976, Sergius Golowin

1976-77, Lilith

1977, Alien

1977, Alien Dark Evil Abstractive Li II

1977, Alien sci-fi 3d model

1977, Mirror Image

1977, The Spell iv

1978, Alien III, Side View II

1978, Vlad Tepes

1980, New York City i - Ugly

1980, New York City xxiii

1980, Untitled

1980, New York City xxiv - escalator

1980, Studio B

1980, Untitled

1983, Portrait of Barbara M. 1

1983-86, Stadt I

1985, Poltergeist 2 - The Metamorphosis

1990, Concept art for Alien 3

1992, Zodiac Taurus

1998, Birth Machine Baby

2003, Museum HR Giger Bar

2003, Museum HR Giger Bar

2003, Museum HR Giger Bar