André Thomkins - European Abstract Art

André Thomkins (1930 - 1985) was a Swiss painter, illustrator, and poet.
"André Thomkins belongs to the most versatile Swiss artists of the 20th century. One of his most self-willed inventions is the Lackskins: A way of painting with liquid paint on water.
André Thomkins (1930-1985) is known as a superb draughtsman and word artist. Like no other he mastered all the classical image media. At the same time, however, he also experimented with different techniques and materials. In the middle 1950s, for example, he developed his Lackskins, in which he painted and drew on water with lacquer paint, and created pictures of enormous imaginative impact. The lacquer falls as drops or runs in a string onto the water and forms a skin, which continuously changes and at the same time can be manipulated. At a certain point Thomkins fixed the movement by lifting off the floating image onto a piece of paper. In this way the Lackskins offer themselves to both chance and artistic exploration. They require patience and willingness on the part of both the artist and the viewer, to take in the play of forms created by the paint and to discover the rich world of images therein.
With his Lackskins André Thomkins drew on old techniques such as the manufacture of marble paper and then expanded on these. During the heyday of abstract painting he concurrently found his own way and created links to the discussions among the artistic avant-garde of his time. For the first time ever, this magnificent body of work is shown in a comprehensive way in an exhibition. It reveals the surprisingly numerous facets of André Thomkins’ art and opens up a new approach to this fascinating œuvre. “Seen geographically”, said André Thomkins, “Lackskin floats just off the land of milk and honey…”(buendner-kunstmuseum.ch)

Martin Disler - Neo-Expressionism Art

Martin Disler (1949 -1996 ) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer.Martin Disler was a Swiss painter best known for his naïve, expressive paintings and sculptures. With affinities to various avant-garde movements such as CoBrA, Neue Wilde, and Art Brut, Disler drew on psychological and mythical archetypes to further convey the angst evident in the formal construction of his works.

Hans Ruedi Giger

Hans Ruedi Giger (1940 – 2014) was a Swiss painter, best known for airbrush images of humans and machines linked together in a cold biomechanical relationship.

"H.R. Giger was a Swiss artist and designer known for his nightmarish science-fiction motifs. Giger is best known for his book Necronomicon (1977), as well as his design work for Ridley Scott’s 1979 feature film Alien. “Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is,” he once said. Born Hans Ruedi Giger on February 5, 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, he went on to study architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts in Zürich. His first successful attempt at reaching audiences with visual art came in 1969, when a painting of his was published as a poster. Giger cited Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí as major influences on his stylizations of bodies and machinery. Before becoming involved in the production of Alien, Giger was recruited by the avant-garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky to be a designer for his unproduced film version of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune (1965). Though the film was never completed, it gave Giger a chance to produce a number of intricate objects and artworks based on the novel’s themes and characters. Over the decades that followed, he continued producing work for films, music videos, album covers, and videogames. Giger died on May 12, 2014 in Zürich, Switzerland. Today, much of his work is housed in the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland."(artnet)

Gerard Ernest Schneider - Abstract Expressionism - Action Painting

Gerard Ernest Schneider (1896–1986) was a Swiss painter.
A major pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, a gestural and personal form of abstraction, along with Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages, Gérard Schneider was shown in Paris at the Galerie Louis Carré as early as 1950.From 1955 to 1960, Schneider’s work was exhibited at the famous Kootz Gallery in New York where an exclusivity contract connected the artist and the major American dealer Samuel Kootz.From gesture, “the shape is born, whether lyrical or dramatic, with its colour and technical means, without any reference to external nature” according to Schneider.
Eugène Ionesco even spoke of “the original, eruptive, richness” of his work.
From nervous gesture and volcanic composition, full of tension, of the 1950s followed “the light years” from Michel Ragon’s expression, which were marked by the balance of forms reflecting each other and the explosion of colour. “Painting should be looked in the same way as music is listened to” as Schneider enjoyed saying.Wikipedia