Swiss hyper-realist painter and graphic artist Franz Gertsch, famed inter alia for his massive format footage of US rock singer Patti Smith, has died aged 92, the museum that bears his title mentioned just lately.
“On 21.12.2022, our eponymous artist Franz Gertsch died peacefully at the superior age of 92,” the museum mentioned in an announcement on its web site.
Gertsch, born in Bern canton on March 8, 1930, initially got here to prominence along with his tableaux of kids taking part in at the seaside after travelling to the Camargue in southern France for a Sinti and Roma pageant in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
His late Seventies sequence of labor on rock icon Smith cemented his place in up to date inventive consciousness after he had achieved a world breakthrough along with his work Medici at the 1972 documenta 5 up to date artwork exhibition in Kassel, Germany.
In the mid-Eighties he stopped portray for a time and devoted himself to large-scale woodcuts impressed by nature.
Following a solo present in 1999 at the Venice Biennale, the Museum Franz Gertsch opened in Burgdorf, Switzerland.
Gertsch based mostly his work on images projected onto canvas, capturing life in portraiture, typically in monochrome.
In 2017, the 12 months the Jenisch museum in Vevey devoted an exhibition to his work, Gertsch noticed his Luciano II portray fetch greater than US$3mil (RM13.2mil) in London.
At the time, Sotheby’s saluted “an artist who up to date the virtuosic technical ability of the Old Masters and utilized it to a bohemian up to date context of hazy magnificence and flash-bulb mild results.”
In 2015, Gertsch allowed Swiss TV to movie him as he created a woodcut.
“Thought I’m a really nervous and impatient individual – I discover it arduous to be affected person – as soon as I’ve a gouge or a brush in my hand a stillness comes over me,” he instructed the broadcaster as he labored. – AFP
