HR Giger

* 05 Feb 1940, † 12 May 2014, Swiss, visual artist & painter

I find myself standing in front of a house surrounded by a garden where nature had taken over complete control. It is raining and nobody opens, for fifteen minutes. Then suddenly, HR Giger appears in the door frame, barefoot, and asks me inside. His rooms are pleasantly dark and his artwork is everywhere. In a pile of small figurines, I discover an Academy Award. “Hollywood doesn’t interest me”, he says. Giger is intriguingly quiet but very present. And I have the feeling that there are only very few people who truly understand him.

Hans Rudolf “HR” Giger was born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland. His father, a pharmacist, viewed art as a "breadless profession" and strongly encouraged him to enter pharmacy. He moved to Zurich in 1962, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970.

While becoming an acclaimed interior designer, HR Giger was producing his own art, that eventually became very successful. From 1962 on, he dedicated his entire time to art and film. He was best known for sculptures and airbrush images of humans and machines linked together in a cold 'biomechanical' relationship. He won an Academy Award for his work on the film “Alien” for best visual effects. In Switzerland, there are two theme-bars that reflect his interior designs, and his work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum at Gruyères.

The artist was married twice and used to live and work in Zurich, where he died on May 12, 2014.
Source: Wikipedia