Franz Gertsch

Franz Gertsch - With Huaa...! to a new art

Franz Gertsch was born on 8th March 1930 in Mörigen, Switzerland. From 1947 to 1952, he trained with Hans Schwarzenbach in Bern and at the Max Rudolf von Mühlenen painting school. In 1969, he created his famous painting Huaa...! which the artist himself also called Werk Nr. 1. The unusual, onomatopoeic title veiled a photorealistic depiction of an officer charging on horseback with his sabre drawn – the painting which marked Gertsch's turn towards hyperrealistic depictions, for which he is still admired today. Gertsch sees the inspiration for this characteristic and unmistakable style of painting as being closely linked to an ascent of Monte Lema. In contrast to later works, Gertsch did not use a photograph as a model here, but instead orientated himself on a scene from the film The Charge of the Light Brigade, which deals with the Crimean War with biting criticism.

A Swiss artist conquers the art world

The 1970s proved to be extremely successful for Franz Gertsch. After receiving the Swiss Federal Art Scholarship in 1971, he was able to take part in documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 with his painting Medici, and in 1978 was a guest at the Venice Biennale for the first time. This success impressively vindicated the artist's radical decision to discard everything he had created before his key work Huaa...! After the highly political work Vietnam, Gertsch produced a whole series of portraits, for which he used photographs of Swiss artist friends and family members as models and which also resulted in the famous painting Marina schminkt Luciano (Marina puts make-up on Luciano), which plays with gender. These works brought Franz Gertsch's final breakthrough and made him one of the most respected artists in Switzerland. His portrait series of the singer Patti Smith also became popular.

Franz Gertsch reaches his goal slowly

Gertsch does not work quickly, but thoroughly. He sometimes took a whole year or more to complete a wall-filling work, which is why his oeuvre comprised less than a hundred pictures and woodcuts even in the autumn of his career. The latter were created between 1986 and 1994, and here too Gertsch achieved a wealth of detail and truth to reality that was considered impossible by connoisseurs. Franz Gertsch received prizes and awards for his work, and the establishment of the Franz Gertsch Museum, financed by the Swiss entrepreneur Willy Michel, was a special honour. Retrospectives of his impressive work are shown almost every year, including in Berlin, Baden-Baden, Zurich, Vienna and Saarbrücken. While urban backdrops were the subject of his works at the beginning of his career, over the years the artist increasingly turned to nature, which he made the subject of numerous paintings without any figurative accessories.

Franz Gertsch lives and works in the Swiss municipality of Rüschegg, where he was also made an honorary citizen in 2006.