Hans Erni

The work of the Lucerne artist and graphic artist Hans Erni, who died in 2015 at the age of 106, is impressive firstly for its enormous material diversity: painting in small as well as monumental formats, drawing and printmaking, ceramics and relief, poster and book art. This richness is matched, secondly, by his stylistic range: from the realist and Cubist-inspired beginnings of the 1930s by way of purely abstract compositions to the virtuoso synthesis of the two modes of expression in the 1940s. With their combination of an informel ground and masterly representational depiction, Erni’s striking contributions to Surrealism prepare the ground for the works of the following decades. Previously vilified on political grounds, he now realised numerous public commissions that made him internationally known as one of the most important representatives of Swiss art in the twentieth century. His ever-alert interest in social, political and ecological concerns, his commitment to peace, social justice and conservation are reflected in his pictorial and graphic work just as much as his curiosity about foreign cultures, to which he gave expression in his pictures and books at an early stage. Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Hans Erni Museum, this book offers for the first time a survey of the varied holdings of the collection of the Hans Erni-Stiftung.