Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Pre-Alien work of HR Giger on display at Swiss museum

Museum
The exhibition is part of the Giger Year, which honours the artist on the tenth anniversary of his death. Keystone-SDA

Youthful works by Alien creator HR Giger will be shown at the Graubünden Museum of Fine Arts from Saturday.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Photographs from the artist’s youth in Chur, eastern Switzerland, are also on display until November 24. The exhibition is part of the Giger Year, which honours the artist on the tenth anniversary of his death.

As the art museum explained at the opening of the exhibition, numerous photographic documents from Giger’s youth in the cantonal capital have surfaced in his estate. They were published in a book for the first time on the tenth anniversary of his death and are now being presented at the Kunstmuseum. The personal photos are complemented by works and objects from the youthful years of the world-famous artist.

More

The exhibition tells many stories that show a surprising view of an artist’s youth, the museum’s artistic director, Stephan Kunz, told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA.

‘Too one-sided an image’

The public had previously had too one-sided an image of the creator of the monster in the Alien films. “HR Giger lived in very different worlds, knew the fine game as well as fierce rock ‘n’ roll and jazz,” Kunz said.

On the one hand, the photographs provide an insight into Giger’s middle-class, family environment. “They show expressive images from the early years in Chur, when HR Giger gave free rein to his creativity and set up his legendary ‘Black Room’ in his parents’ house,” Kunz explained.

The exhibition shows developments that made many things possible and “only seem logical in retrospect”.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

Beer sales dampened by bad weather

More

Beer sales in Switzerland watered down by bad weather

This content was published on The past brewing year fell through in Switzerland, partly due to the bad weather. Beer sales shrank again. For the first time, per capita consumption fell below the 50 liter mark.

Read more: Beer sales in Switzerland watered down by bad weather

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR