The Geiger Museum opened in 1998 in the medieval Château Saint-Germain in the 400-year-old walled city of Gruyere; As permanent home to many of the major works of Hans Ruedi Giger, the museum houses the largest and most impressive collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture and film designs, dating back to the early 1960s.
Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Giger’s work includes designs for the 1979 film Alien.
H.R. Giger was born in Chur, Switzerland, in 1940. As a child he developed a strong passion for all things surreal and macabre. His need to express himself and share the unique aspects of his powerful imagination drew him to the visual arts. Giger’s own dreams and the brilliant imagery of such fantastic geniuses as Gustav Meyrink, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Kubin and H.P. Lovecraft combined to form a rich soil from which the amzing imagery of Giger’s own art has come to sprout. It has since bloomed into the vast wealth of exotic women, wondrously bizarre landscapes, and frightening creatures that have captured the fascination of millions of fans worldwide.
Meticulously detailed, Giger’s paintings are usually done in large formats and worked and reworked by this maestro of the airbrush. It was Giger’s popular art book, ‘Necronomicon’, that caught the eye of director Ridley Scott as he was searching for the right look for a creature in his upcoming film. That creature, of course, turned out to be the Alien, and Giger’s masterful designs for the film of the same name garnered him a much-deserved Academy Award.
Giger’s fascinating biomechanical style, that brilliant synthesis of flesh and machine, has been realized not only through his remarkable paintings but also via sculpture pieces, elegantly fashioned furniture, and architectural and interior design projects. His paintings have been displayed in galleries and museums throughout the world.
Giger’s alien aesthetic, his ‘biomechanics’, goes beyond talent, and even art. It enters the rarified realm of the near magical, and certainly the land of genius. The ensuing art is a mere taste of the phenomenal oeuvre that this unique Swiss maestro has created.
In December of 2022, VINCENT CASTIGLIA GALLERY in Fort Lauderdale Florida presented “Homage to H.R. Giger” curated by New York art dealer and collector Stephen Romano.. a PDF of the exhibition catalog is available here
