Giger paintings. Hans Rudolf Giger: Dark Art

The artist Hans Rudi Giger, a legend of sci-fi and Western pop culture, the creator of the xenomorphs from the film “Alien,” has died. He died on Monday in Zurich as a result of injuries sustained due to a bad fall. According to the SRF portal, the artist died in the hospital from injuries received when he fell from the stairs. He was 74 years old.

The Swiss Hans Rudi Giger, a follower of Dali and a fan of Lovecraft, suffered from a sleep disorder and his first artistic experiences considered it as art therapy.

The ideas that came to Giger's mind were quite nightmarish: extremely cold and mechanical depictions of human bodies and their parts, hybrids of people and machines, in which Freud would have found a lot of interesting things.

In 1975, he worked with director Alejandro Jodorowsky on the film adaptation of the science fiction novel Dune and there he met screenwriter Dan O'Bannon. Nothing came of the project, but O*Bannon was deeply shocked by Giger’s sketches. He returned to Hollywood and began, as he later put it, to write a script “about Giger’s monster.”

Now we know this project called “Alien”. When the script went into production, O'Bannon convinced director Ridley Scott to commission Giger to develop the monster's character. The basis was the drawing NecronomIV from Giger’s collection Necronomicon, created under the influence of the already mentioned Lovecraft. Here the monster is more anthropomorphic than we are used to seeing in the movies.

And it all started... with a skull.

Already as a child, Giger was drawn to dark romance. And he also loved to draw. One day, his father, a pharmacist, gave little Hans-Rudi a human skull, which he received at some scientific seminar. From that moment on, Giger was completely bewitched by otherworldly images, which influenced his further work.

In June 1998, in a small Gruyère, home of the famous floral-flavored cheese, now has a museum. A museum that contrasts so sharply with the tranquil atmosphere of the peaceful and elegant city, the pastoral landscape of the surrounding area and the medieval castle of Chateau Saint-Germain, that , white wine and local delicacies, tourists involuntarily shudder when they stumble upon doors decorated with gargoyles. This -Giger Museum- the artist who invented “Alien” and created the design for the film of the same name.

Atmosphere inside very specific. Dark and quiet. On the black floor there are some mysterious symbols, causing vague anxiety and tension. Life-size Alien installations hang from the ceiling. However, they can be seen here not only under the ceiling.

Pictures on the walls beautiful woman, partially fused with the machine... Gloomy holographic posters. Skulls unknown creatures. Death. Degradation. Ugliness. Monsters and biomechanical creatures. An abundance of black, gray and red...

And so - three floors of eerie, fantastic exhibition, which seems to have no end...

An endless suite of halls and the frightening blackness of another world - it is so meticulously depicted by the artist’s airbrush.

And even the furniture on one of the floors fully corresponds to the dark, surreal and frightening world of HR Giger. What a chair with a back that resembles the torn-out backbone of some huge animal!

Looking at the artist’s works not only gives you goosebumps, but quickly runs through your body. So a bar designed in the same style as . It seems to be assembled from the vertebrae of alien monsters, and the role of bar stools in it is played by thrones from the never-made film “Dune” by A. Hodorosky.

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Hans Rudolf Giger was born in 1940 in the Swiss town of Chur (Koer), the capital of the German-speaking canton of Grisons, where his father worked as a pharmacist. Giger attended school applied arts in Zurich (now the Design Museum) and then completed his education studying interior design and industrial design.

Hans Rudolf Giger

Hans Rudolf Giger became famous throughout the world for his fantastic realism. Let's take a few steps through his museum - this unique and paradoxical universe. Giger has been called a provocative genius, and indeed, the emotions he evokes leave no one indifferent. Isn't this the purpose of art?

Gruyere

The artist bought the Chateau Saint-Germain in Gruyères in 1997, where his museum was opened in June 1998.

small medieval town

With this, Giger gave Gruyere a new dimension, where two completely different worlds met: a small medieval town, green and picturesque...

Giger Museum

... and a parallel universe, unrealistically futuristic.

entrance to the Giger Museum

Everything in the museum was created by Giger; he acts here as a monumental designer, a visionary artist, and a sculptor. His profession is an architect and industrial designer brings a certain caliber and variety to the work.

Black room. Decor. 1957

Giger's first paintings, mostly done in ink, date back to around the 60s.

They convey the anxiety of this time: war, creation nuclear weapons, overpopulation, the absurdity of human existence.

These works were published in the Swiss journal Political and Cultural Criticism in 1963, along with the poem:

We, atomic children, are not here for trial, not for reproaches.
We don’t want to shock you, much less blame anyone
Something that can't be blamed...
But we ask you to get used to us,
accept us as your sisters and brothers,
and just love.

But don't ask for guarantees in return,
Years will pass, we will become the majority.
And who then will be considered anomalous,
Suffering will be transferred to whom?

Airbrushed head collage

Giger uses several methods and art technician. He considers the most important work done with an airbrush.

Sketch 350. Tribute to Böcklin. 1977 ("Island of the Dead")

Giger's paintings are painted spontaneously and unconditionally, without a preliminary sketch. Despite this, we see perfect symmetry and harmony.

Hieroglyphs, 1978

The main motives of Giger's work: birth, subconscious, life, suffering, dreams, violence, wars, cars.

Crowley (The beast 666) Number of the beast

Fear and death are translated into symbolic and provocative language.

Dance of the Witches, 1977

Giger likes to show inner side human: biological architecture.

Landscape XV, 1972-1973

He writes carnal

Waterfall, 1977

organic

Comic strip, 1989

and erotic landscapes.

Biomechanoid III, 1974

In addition, machines are always present in his works; he seems to transplant them into the human body. In the Biomecanic series, Giger introduced the concept technical progress from the point of view of robots.

No. 250 Lee. Steklography, 1974

The woman plays a leading role in the pictures of Hans Giger. It represents the spiritual and divine aspect of the artist's world.

No. 307, The Master and Margarita, 1976

He writes them in the form of mothers, goddesses

No. 307, Friedrich Kuhn, Steklography, 1973

and seductresses, with almost absolute power.

No. 324, Satan, 1977

The origins of Giger's images can often be found in his dreams, nightmares or futuristic visions.

Necron

He conveys them on canvas and paper boldly and masterfully.

No. 380. Pilot in the cockpit after the Alien crash

The Alien is a character created by Giger in the same state of mind as all his other biomechanical creatures. For his sketches for the film, he received an Oscar in Hollywood in 1980.

No. 290. Dune II, 1975

In addition, the artist created several other characters and landscapes for films such as Dune, Poltergeist.

In the world of tattoos, Giger is also a source of inspiration for expressive tattoos.

No. 218 Cover for the album "Brain Salad Surgery" ( English rock band Emerson)

Hans Giger designed many of the covers for musical groups, in particular for Emerson Lake & Palmer, Debbie Harry, Carcass and Celtic frost, as well as accessories for Korn (American nu metal band from Bakersfield) and Mylene Farmer.

Giger Bar

Giger's latest creation is a bar in gothic style. It is located in the house opposite the museum. At first I didn’t even understand that you could come here, I thought it was a continuation of the museum or a private part of the house. The design concept is based on a cathedral made of bones. Now the Giger Bar is an integral part of the surrealist and futuristic museum, where you can sit and drink a glass of Gruyere wine (I recommend the 2010 wine)

April 26 is International Alien Day. Over the years of its existence, the “wild but cute” creatures have managed to win the hearts of thousands of viewers. Perhaps this is due to the unique gloomy atmosphere of the world they inhabit. Or maybe it’s all about the creatures themselves, which have been successfully frightening more than one generation of people for more than one generation. One way or another, it’s all about the dark fantasy of their creator, Hans Rudi Giger (1940-2014).

With all due respect to the work of the other creators of Alien - screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusset and director Ridley Scott, we must admit that it is Giger who owes Aliens its unique style. The artist managed to weave together the trends of science fiction and gothic horror. Thanks to him, next to the progressive world of high technology, illuminated bright light stars, there is a gloomy world of darkness, full of dangers and primal fears. The combination of two seemingly incompatible genres makes the world of Aliens unique. It’s not for nothing that the film “Alien” is still considered a trendsetter in the space horror genre.

Oh, the wondrous shine of the exoskeleton!
Oh, wonderful parietal ridge!
And the outer ribs have a steel shine
Was a witch's amulet
Similar
G. L. Oldie. "Stranger Among Our Own"

Devil Artist

Hans Rudi Giger was born in 1940 in the Swiss town of Chur into the family of a pharmacist. The future artist was indelibly impressed by a human skull, once given to his father: the boy developed a craving for everything dark and mysterious. Hans studied architecture and design at the Zurich School of Applied Arts.

The first serious works done in ink and oil appeared in the early 60s. In 1966, when Giger was working as an interior designer, his first solo exhibition of paintings took place. Giger later developed unique style drawing. Spraying became his favorite technique acrylic paints using overlay templates.

There were many rumors about Giger. Some considered him an artist of Evil. And it’s not surprising, because even since student years he preferred to live in “cursed” houses and collected objects used in the rituals of the Black Mass. In 1975, Giger even participated in the Paris Satanic Exhibition, and many of his works are openly blasphemous. But perhaps the most famous of them is the album “Necronomicon”, published in 1977. It is from this that the Alien’s legs “grow.”

Scott was impressed by Giger's Necronomicon album, and he asked the artist to do something similar. The similarities are easy to notice.

Giger's drawings from various volumes"Necronomicon".

Fathers and sons

The script for Alien was developed by Dan O'Bannon in the summer of 1972. O'Bannon, a talented graduate of the University of Southern California Film Studies, majored in satire. While participating in the filming of the film “Dark Star” directed by John Carpenter, Dan decided to write a script similar in theme, but different in style. The resulting story, tentatively titled "Memory," would later become the first half of Alien. He edited and finalized the text together with producer Ron Shusset, with whom O’Bannon lived after returning from the failed filming of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune (1975). After numerous rewrites, the scattered sheets turned into a full-fledged script.

The main difficulty was creating the appearance of the Alien and “adjusting” all the events of the film to it. During the work, the designers proposed many concepts, none of which were approved. Created by artists the creatures, which could only be called monsters with a stretch, were in no way suitable for the director’s grandiose plans.

Ridley Scott understood perfectly well: in order to impress the public, you need more than just a big and slobbering Jabberwocky from the planet God knows where-13, sporting papier-mâché teeth and other paraphernalia of B-movies. It is necessary to create an atmosphere of suspense, to unfold before the audience a panorama of a huge universe, which, on the one hand, would amaze with its size, and on the other, would evoke an oppressive feeling of gloom and hostility. Bringing such an ideological paradox to life seemed an impossible task. What was needed was a truly brilliant creator.

That's when O'Bannon remembered a man he met while filming Dune: Hans Rudi Giger. The concept drawings for Dune created by this Swiss surrealist sank into O’Bannon’s soul and influenced great influence to the script. After discussing Giger's work, O'Bannon and Shusset realized that they knew how the alien creature would behave. According to the plan, the monster was supposed to use people's bodies as living incubators and be born by tearing human flesh. This is how the main focus of the script was developed, to which the text itself was quickly adjusted. All that remained was to resolve the issue with appearance creatures.

After such a “kiss”, people, as a rule, do not live long

First sketches

In the summer of 1977, O'Bannon informed Giger about filming a new science fiction film. Soon the screenwriter received his Necronomicon from Giger and showed the drawings to the director. When Ridley Scott leafed through the publication, he could not recover from the shock for several seconds. It seemed to him as if someone had climbed into his head and, reading his thoughts, depicted on paper exactly what Scott so wanted to embody in the film. Despite resistance from the producers (who obviously had a different point of view), the director insisted on involving this particular artist in the filming. In 1978, a contract was signed with Giger. Over the course of three months, he made more than two dozen drawings of Aliens and sent them to the UK, where they were to create a full-length figure of the creature.

However, the sculptors failed. And then Giger was personally invited to England to participate in preparations for filming. The trip lasted for 5 months. Scott insisted that Giger handle the styling for the entire film. The work was carried out in the strictest secrecy. The artist spent his days in his Shepperton studio working on interior designs. spaceship, inside which, according to the scenario, Alien eggs were discovered. There, Giger created the appearance of the dead pilot and the scenery of the desert planet (LV-426), where this ship was found.

Giger's first drawings of Alien

The role of the Alien in the first film was played by a non-professional actor named Bolaji Badejo. The twenty-six-year-old Nigerian studied graphic arts in London. It was chance that brought him together with Ridley Scott. The director wanted to choose such a person for the role of the Alien, so that it would be difficult for the viewer to understand that the creature on the screen is just a skillfully made costume. At first, his choice fell on Peter Mayhew, who played the role of Chewbacca in “ Star Wars" However, the combination of the Nigerian’s height (2.07 meters) and thinness convinced Scott to take Bolaji for the role.

Giger spent four months working on the Alien costume. Each element was made individually to suit Bolazhi’s figure. The artist literally used the Nigerian as a frame, “hanging” finished parts. Standing in one place for several hours at a time was not the most pleasant experience, but the result, as it turned out, was worth it.

"Alien" face of Nigerian nationality

The epitome of horror

After many months of work, Giger managed to create a most curious creature. The Alien, or, as it was called in the second part (Aliens, 1986), a xenomorph, goes through several stages of development throughout the film. From a design point of view, the last one is of greatest interest. Several times Giger had to redo the work due to the overtly sexual nature of certain parts. For example, the famous banana-shaped head in its first version looked even more provocative.

An adult xenomorph is tall and graceful in its own way. On the one hand, it has much in common with earthly creatures, and on the other, it frightens with its foreignness. Some features of his appearance (and habits, by the way, too) were borrowed from insects - ants, termites, scorpions. Others are found in reptiles. However, the Alien's silhouette most closely resembles a human. This is explained primarily by the fact that the role of the monster was played by a live actor dressed in a suit. This suit, which cost 250 thousand dollars, consisted of fifteen separate parts.

The greatest interest is caused by the long smooth head of the xenomorph and its jointed tail, for the movements of which a separate person, Carlo Rambaldi, was responsible for the filming. The Alien's face (if you can call it a face) was made from a plastic model of a real human skull. Giger inserted this skull into a head blank and began to modify it: he lengthened the jaw by six inches, made several growths on the chin, smoothed out the sharp corners, added soft rubber in several places and applied a layer of paint. The result exceeded our wildest expectations. No monster from a horror movie could boast such a frightening appearance.

Even Ridley Scott, who had a cool attitude towards the horror genre, was pleased with the result. Thanks to the impressive design and competent director's work, the 1979 xenomorph looks terrifying even today. In 1980, Giger and Rambaldi received an Oscar for best special effects for their work. And absolutely deserved.

Undoubtedly, "Alien" borrowed many ideas from films of the forties and fifties (for example, "Monster Without a Face", 1958 or "Night of the Bloodthirsty Monster", 1958). Its plot, to be honest, is not very original, and the dialogues do not carry any philosophical meaning. But he has no equal in his ability to convey the atmosphere of confrontation between man and alien aggressors. With a budget of eleven million dollars, the film grossed seven times the box office. Such success is rare even in our time.

The films, which reveal to us in all their glory some of the events of this universe, managed to change four directors. Many science fiction writers have tried themselves as authors of books on the world of Aliens. Dark Horse Comics has published about a hundred comics telling the story of the confrontation between humans and xenomorphs. Much water has passed under the bridge, but Alien is still winning new fans. All this proves one thing simple truth: true masterpieces are timeless. And, in the end, a quarter of a century is not such a long time for a brilliant idea.

When I was in Switzerland, I couldn’t help but visit Gruyères. And not even because this town is known throughout the world for its wonderful cheese and ancient fortress. To a greater extent, I wanted to visit the museum of H.R. Giger, whose stunning works I saw at a surrealist exhibition back in April 2011 in Moscow. They made such a big impression on me that when I found out that there was a Giger Museum in Switzerland, I definitely wanted to visit it. The emotions turned out to be much stronger than I could even imagine. Imagine: dark halls, almost no light, lack of visitors (only on the second floor I came across one couple), the general mood from the very entrance, specific decoration, design, black vertebral furniture, and special, incomparable paintings... But let's take things in order.

Hans Rudolf Giger was born in 1940 in the Swiss town of Chur (Koer), the capital of the German-speaking canton of Grisons, where his father worked as a pharmacist. Giger studied at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich (now the Design Museum) and then completed his education by studying interior design and industrial design.

He currently lives and works in Zurich.

Hans Rudolf Giger

The artist bought the Chateau Saint-Germain in Gruyères in 1997, where his museum was opened in June 1998.

small medieval town

With this, Giger gave Gruyere a new dimension, where two completely different worlds met: a small medieval town, green and picturesque...

Giger Museum

And a parallel universe, unrealistically futuristic.

entrance to the Giger Museum

Everything in the museum was created by Giger; he acts here as a monumental designer, a visionary artist, and a sculptor. His profession as an architect and industrial designer brings a certain caliber and variety to his work.

Black room. Decor. 1957

Giger's first paintings, mostly done in ink, date back to around the 60s.

They convey the anxiety of this time: war, the creation of nuclear weapons, overpopulation, the absurdity of human existence.

These works were published in the Swiss journal Political and Cultural Criticism in 1963, along with the poem:

But don't ask for guarantees in return,
Years will pass, we will become the majority.
And who then will be considered anomalous,
Suffering will be transferred to whom?

Airbrushed head collage

Giger uses several methods and artistic techniques. He considers the most important work done with an airbrush.

Sketch 350. Tribute to Böcklin. 1977 ("Island of the Dead")

Giger's paintings are painted spontaneously and unconditionally, without a preliminary sketch. Despite this, we see perfect symmetry and harmony.

Hieroglyphs, 1978

The main motives of Giger's work: birth, subconscious, life, suffering, dreams, violence, wars, cars.

Crowley (The beast 666) Number of the beast

Fear and death are translated into symbolic and provocative language.

Dance of the Witches, 1977

Giger likes to show the inner side of man: the architecture of the biological.

Landscape XV, 1972-1973

He writes carnal

Waterfall, 1977

organic

Comic strip, 1989

and erotic landscapes.

Biomechanoid III, 1974

In addition, machines are always present in his works; he seems to transplant them into the human body. In the Biomecanic series, Giger introduced the concept of technological progress from the point of view of robots.

No. 250 Lee. Steklography, 1974

The woman plays a leading role in the pictures of Hans Giger. It represents the spiritual and divine aspect of the artist's world.

No. 307, The Master and Margarita, 1976

He writes them in the form of mothers, goddesses

No. 307, Friedrich Kuhn, Steklography, 1973

and seductresses, with almost absolute power.

No. 324, Satan, 1977

The origins of Giger's images can often be found in his dreams, nightmares or futuristic visions.

Necron

He conveys them on canvas and paper boldly and masterfully.

No. 380. Pilot in the cockpit after the Alien crash

The Alien is a character created by Giger in the same state of mind as all his other biomechanical creatures. He received an Oscar in Hollywood in 1980 for his sketches for the film.

No. 290. Dune II, 1975

In addition, the artist created several other characters and landscapes for films such as Dune, Poltergeist.

In the world of tattoos, Giger is also a source of inspiration for expressive tattoos.

No. 218 Cover for the album "Brain Salad Surgery" (English rock band Emerson)

Hans Giger designed many covers for bands, notably Emerson Lake & Palmer, Debbie Harry, Carcass and Celtic frost, as well as accessories for Korn (an American nu metal band from Bakersfield) and Mylene Farmer.

Giger Bar

Giger's latest creation is a gothic-style bar. It is located in the house opposite the museum. At first I didn’t even understand that you could come here, I thought it was a continuation of the museum or a private part of the house. The design concept is based on a cathedral made of bones. Now the Giger Bar is an integral part of the surrealist and futuristic museum, where you can sit and drink a glass of Gruyere wine (I recommend the 2010 wine)

All the best! May 2012

Hans Rudolf Giger(German: Hans Rudolf Giger), aka Hans Rudi Giger(German: Hans Rüdi Giger) is a Swiss artist, representative of fantastic realism, best known for his design work for the film Alien. His name is often written as HR Giger, real name Hansruedi Giger.

Born in the Swiss town of Chur (canton of Graubünden, Switzerland / Chur, Graubunden, Switzerland/) in the family of a pharmacist. The catalyst for the development of the imagination of an already fascinated child with everything dark and mysterious was a skull brought by his father (given to him as a professional reward from one of the medical companies).

For the first time, Giger's drawings (the "Atomkinder" - "Atomic Children" cycle) were published in 1959 in a magazine published at the Kura school, as well as in underground publications such as "Clou" and "Hotcha".

The first posters began to be published already in 1969, at the same time his first personal exhibitions opened.

True fame came to him in 1977 with the release of the third book, The Necronomicon. This collection of posters especially attracted the attention of English director Ridley Scott. He invited Giger to work on the concept of the creatures, the artistic design of his film “Alien” and create the image of the xenomorph. Subsequently, work on this film brought the artist an Oscar in 1980 for “Best visual effects" The drawings of his “monster” served as sketches for the next 3 films and for the “Alien vs. Predator” duology, although in these films the image and the very essence of the alien with acidic blood was radically changed.

The sets of the science fiction film Prometheus (2012) were created this time without the participation of Hans Rudolf Giger, the artist of the very first Alien, although, without a doubt, all the artists on the project created models of the creatures and landscape of Prometheus under the enormous influence of his work. Moreover, Giger’s sketches and designs, which he created in 1969 for Alien, were used in the work on the film, but various reasons were never used at that time. Ridley Scott talks about this, as well as why H.R. Giger did not participate in the creation of Prometheus, in bonus materials (lasting 34 hours) for the film, released as separate discs.

In the Middle Ages, the dragon became the personification of Satan, and as such was supposed to be terrifying, and therefore should have been portrayed as scary. Therefore, in the image of a dragon, they collected all the worst things that cause fear and disgust: snake scales, a lizard-like and at the same time phallic body of a lizard (lizards and salamanders were feared in panic), a forked snake tongue and poisonous saliva, a snake tail, toothed and, in addition to all this, spewing fire (of course, hellish) mouth, wings of a bat (which was also feared). In short - sheer evil, sheer abomination, sheer horror. An identical operation was subsequently performed by H.R. Giger (H.R. Giger): creating the image of “Alien”, he brought together all human phobias.

Another famous film work was his work on the film Species (1995), a science fiction film by R. Donaldson, where Giger designed the alien beauties. In addition, Giger, in collaboration with Chris Foss and Jean Giraud (Moebius), participated as a designer in the work on the film Dune.

One of Giger's favorite pastimes is writing books, most famously the book about the film "Species".

The airbrush gives Giger's paintings a unique artistic quality. This is a device that sprays paint. Giger proved that painting can also be created using a mechanism. Actually, this has its own subtext, especially considering that the main theme of his paintings is the biomechanisms he created, which combine flesh and metal. His friend Timothy Leary wrote about Giger's work:

“They (the paintings) clearly communicate where we came from and where we will go. They tap into our deepest, biological memories. These are our photographs - eight months before birth. Vaginal landscapes. Intrauterine cards. And further - into the depths of the nucleus of a human cell. Want to take a look at your genetic code? Ready to see how genes make proteins by cloning your own tissue? Just turn the page. Our cities are like giant anthills inhabited by colonies of insects, faceless and ugly. And this is us."

Giger's works are made in the genre of fantastic realism. Also, many artists call his style necro-gothic, biomechanics, and sub-styles - erotomechanics, etc. According to Walter Schurian, “[...] Giger’s works have become the personification of the demonic side of fantastic art.” In 2000, the Taschen publishing house offered admirers of the artist’s work a collection of Tarot cards ( Baphomet Tarot – by Akron & H.R.Giger). Each card is a careful reproduction of one of Giger's paintings.

The artist designed and carefully crafted a microphone stand for concert performances and filming in videos for Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis. The contract stipulated the creation of five racks. Giger ended up creating three, two of which were purchased by Jonathan Davis. The album covers of Deborah Harry's Koo Koo and Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery were named one of Rolling Stone's 100 Great Covers of the Century.

In 1998, Giger purchased the Chateau Saint-Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and the house is now an active H.R. Museum. Giger and a permanent repository of his works; The maestro also provides the museum's exhibition space for exhibitions of other artists belonging to the movement of fantastic realism. The museum's collection includes numerous grotesques, sculptures, eccentric furniture and models for films, most- from the 60s. On the ground floor there is private collection Giger. The museum contains many sketches for the film Alien, as well as models of monsters. In a tiny nook, separated from the rest of the exhibition by curtains, in the light of a red lamp there are strange drawings with aliens in compromising erotic poses (entrance only for persons over 18 years of age).

The HR Giger Museum in Gruyères houses the HR Giger Bar. The bar was designed by Giger. It features tall arches reminiscent of the spinal ridges of vertebrates. If you are inside, you have the feeling that you have been swallowed by an “alien.” Everything about this bar inspires fear and anxiety. Once upon a time, the Giger Bar was also in New York, but it closed and never appeared in Tokyo - among other miracles, the artist wanted each table to be in a separate elevator cabin and constantly rise and fall. Japanese architects considered this impossible and fell out with Giger.

In 2012 he held exhibitions in Hamburg, Germany, Moscow and Istanbul. Future work is planned personal exhibitions, as well as participating in numerous group exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world.

During the last period of his life, Giger lived and worked in Zurich.

Artist and designer Hans Rudolf Giger died at the age of 75 in hospital from injuries received in a fall from the stairs on Monday, May 12.

On the Internet you can find the following spelling options for the artist’s name and surname:

Hans Rudolf Geiger; H.R. Geiger; Hans Rudi Giger; HR Giger; H. R. Giger; Hansruedi Giger; Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger.

====================================

Hans Rudolf Giger - Summary Bibliography (list of publications with covers designed by the artist).
IMDB page
Mirza Babayev. Giger: Biomechanics of Evil (Day by Day, December 1, 1995)
Video scrolling through the H.R. exhibition catalogue. Giger Seul avec la Nuit

Additional information on Giger's biography was provided by

As soon as it appeared at the box office, the film “Aliens” instantly became a cult favorite, especially among foreign youth. This fact is confirmed by both million-dollar box office receipts and huge amount fanatical fans of the picture.

Thanks to the latter, apparently, the film received a logical continuation; before we knew it, Aliens 2 and Aliens 3 appeared in our lives. In general, we count to five. Until five. In 1980, Aliens won an Oscar. This is the merit of the Swiss artist Hans Rudi Giger. One of the most paradoxical figures of modern art.

CHRONICLE OF A MASTERPIECE

In 1977, Hans Rudi Giger received an order from the film company XX Century Fox to design fantastic monsters for the film Aliens. In early February 1978, director Ridley Scott arrived in Zurich to review preliminary sketches.

Six weeks later, the film company approves the development and summons Giger to London to further discuss the designs.

In another ten weeks final version design is ready. Giger is given another six weeks to “reify” it. However, the process drags on for as long as five months.

Finally, in the fall of 1978, all work was completed. Six months later, the premiere of “Aliens” took place in Hollywood and the film’s triumphant march around the world began.

IN THE NECRONOMICON NETWORKS

The choice of artist for Aliens was natural. The entire work of Hans Rudi Giger is so monstrous that one could not have asked for a better developer of nightmarish alien monsters. However, in reality the effect exceeded all expectations.

The artist received a well-deserved Oscar in the category “Best Visual Effects” in 1980. One of the film critics described the design of this picture as “the frightening presence of Giger’s creativity.” Oddly enough, here it is in a sense secondary: the artist partly quoted himself, his “Necronomicon” (“Death Masks”), which, in turn, was inspired by the book of the same name by G.F. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft's hero, the black magician from Yemen Abdullah al Azred, once wandered through the secret temples of Babylon and Memphis, lived in the “city of evil” Belet el Jin, where he communicated with demons, participated in their rituals and was admitted to some terrifying secret that belonged to a powerful race , more ancient than humanity. According to legend, in 783, in the market square of the city of Sannah in the middle sunny day a mad fanatic Satanist was torn to pieces by an invisible claw.

The book's images captured Giger's imagination. Obsessed with the Necronomicon and a hefty dose of LSD, he followed Abdullah al Azred through the streets of Sannah and created his gallery of Death Masks - more than 30 paintings in three months. It is difficult to say whether the Swiss artist became a consistent Satanist, but relations with Christianity were completely severed.

The subconscious readiness to reject Christ was embedded in him at an early age.

EARLY CRAFTS

Hans Rudi Giger was born on February 5, 1940 in the town of Char, in the family of a pharmacist. He would later say about the place of his birth: “It seems to me that nowhere else were there so many alcoholics, idiots and suicides.”

The most indelible impressions future artist received in Catholic kindergarten. He was often punished, and in a peculiar way. Subsequently, as an adult, Giger more than once experienced excitement at the sight of flowing blood. There were memories of the hours he spent kneeling under the crucifix where Jesus suffered, covered in horrific bloody wounds. An unbreakable chain has formed: pleasure - punishment - blood - excitement. Giger was punished mainly for his attraction to girls. It is noteworthy that the preschooler Hans Rudi even received a nickname - the Killer of Women.

Biomechanics

Giger developed another unusual addiction in junior high school. The teacher took his students out for a walk and started a game of horses; it must be said that these games took place on the site where criminals were executed in the Middle Ages. The horses were girls, the riders were boys. In vain did Hans Rudi try to achieve a change in roles - the coveted harness was never put on him.

But in one of his art albums “Passage Temple Life” (can be roughly translated as “Journey into the life of a temple”, but the English Temple is not only “temple”, but also “temple”) Giger generously provided the heroes with all kinds of belts, clasps and other harnesses, and also collected an impressive collection of men's suspenders.

The nickname “Woman Killer” also turned out to be prophetic in some ways. The women in Giger's paintings - pale, anemic, sickly - are always tortured and raped in the most sophisticated ways.

Almost all of the artist’s major albums were fueled by childhood impressions. The “Ghost Train” project was born in the basement of the house of a venerable pharmacist, which to little Giger seemed like a labyrinth inhabited by terrible ghosts. “My Ghost Train was a one-way trip through this labyrinth filled with skeletons, papier-mâché monsters, hanged men and the dead dancing to the accompaniment of their own bones,” the artist admitted. Over time, the famous basement expanded and extended to include neighboring houses purchased by Giger.

BIKER STYLE

Almost all of the artist’s “nightmarish visions” received one development or another. From the Necronomicon arose quite tangible and moving “Aliens”. From "Ghost Train" - a labyrinth in the artist's private domain. From the hopeless series “The Spell” (“Hope”) - design details for the film “Poltergeist 2”.

From the design developments for the film version of Frank Herbert’s fantasy epic “Dune” - the interior of Giger’s office, in which, according to the master, “sinfulness reigns and black magic happens.” Unlike “Aliens,” the film version of “Dune” did not become a notable event, but computer game, which incorporates Giger’s design, is still popular.

One gets the impression that it is not enough for the artist to embody horror films on canvas; he clearly needs the next step towards embodying all this horror. By the way, these are not canvases at all, but wooden boards, on which the coating is applied using special photo technology and acrylic paints sprayed with an airbrush.

On early stages During his career, Giger worked even more curiously: he hung sheets of paper on a wire and sprayed mascara on them with a toothbrush, and then scratched the lines with a sliver.

One of the first works of just this kind - "Atomickinder" ("Atomic Child") - was published in 1963 by the underground magazines "Clou" and "Hotcha", guessing in a recent graduate of the Zurich art school future cult figure. Giger’s attraction to various kinds of informals remained throughout his life. In the sixties, he created the “Hell’s Angels” cycle, where winged demons rush out of the darkness towards rushing motorcyclists. This work became the emblem of Swiss bikers for 20 years, until they turned to Giger with a request to develop updated attributes and emblems of the movement. The printing house ruined the circulation, but the artist took it anyway and manually corrected the printers’ mistakes, which earned him another great love and worship. Since then, it has become prestigious among bikers to wear tattoos on their bodies based on the works of Giger.

Psychedelia is the most important feature of Giger’s work. It is no coincidence that Kafka, Mayerinck and Lovecraft occupy the first places in the list of the artist’s literary passions. In general, Giger’s work is a kind of “animal icon” of the Apocalypse. Masterfully mastering the techniques of cult painting, the “Swiss Satanist” uses them to demonstrate things related to the infernal plane of existence. The people in his paintings are held together with metal clamps, soldered and welded into parts of destroyed mechanical structures. Bursting skin, spilling entrails...

Savoring infernal horror is an activity no worse than many others. Of course, there is no arguing about tastes - except that the death of the mythical Abdullah al Azred spoils the appetite somewhat. However, the recognized maestro Giger clearly does not suffer from creative indigestion - and what is it from art, and what is just from the evil one...

Giger depicts the victory of matter over spirit, of Satan over Christ. From his autobiography it follows that during his student years he preferred to live in “cursed” houses and collected ritual objects used in rituals such as the Black Mass (his collection included, for example, a “devil’s head” covered with real human skin). His first lover, the beautiful Lee Tobler, fell into lethargy after nine years with Giger and then shot herself. He sympathizes with the Hells Angels and even drew a poster for the organization's rally in Switzerland. After the release of "Giger's Necronomicon" ("Necronomicon" is an apocryphal book of spells that allows you to summon the demonic Lords of the world - the most important source of inspiration for Aleister Crowley, H. P. Lovecraft and many other blackseers), Giger was accepted in absentia into one of secret societies under the name "Frater Alien" ("Brother Alien") - which is undoubtedly recognition of him as an authoritative expert in the field of Evil.

However, knowledge of Evil does not necessarily mean submission to its laws. After all, Evil, in essence, is that illusory reality in which we, ordinary, unenlightened beings, “move and live.” Understanding the nature of Evil can therefore become the path to liberation from its bonds. This is how, in particular, his friend, the famous “psychedelic guru” Timothy Leary, interprets the meaning of Giger’s work:

Giger, you are an otherworldly alien lurking in my body, laying in it your wandering eggs of miracle. You entangled yourself in a silky cocoon, like a larva, and paved a deep tunnel to the gland of my wisdom. Giger, you see deeper than we monomanual primates. Are you a messenger of some superintelligent species? Maybe you are a viral visitor, looking with eyes the color of poppy petals at our reproductive organs?

Giger's work disturbs and horrifies us because it covers a huge evolutionary period. It shows us - and even too clearly - where we came from and where we will go. He dives into our biological memories. He takes our baby photos eight months before we are born. Gynecological landscapes. Intrauterine cards. Giger goes even deeper - into the nuclear structure of our cells. Want to know what your DNA strands look like? Take a look at his work.

Taking us backwards - into our swampy, slimy, vegetative, insectoid past, he always pushes us forward - into space. His ultimate perspective is extraterrestrial. He teaches us to love our slippery, embryonic, insect-like bodies - so that we can transform them.

No matter how we feel about Giger’s work, no matter what meanings it reveals to us, we cannot help but recognize his creative genius. Making extensive use of the technique of overlay templates and spray guns, which, by his own admission, allows the artist to function automatically, beyond the limits of ordinary clear consciousness, he creates paintings so realistic that they can be mistaken for photographs. (Which, by the way, once let down the Danish customs officers, who refused to let them into the country. Giger, talking about this incident, remarks: “Where, I wonder, did they think I was taking photographs? In hell, or what?”) Going to his grave, Giger blessed Dali - another representative of “super-realism”. Giger's art, like all real art, opens up new dimensions of reality, thereby giving us the opportunity to expand our understanding of the world and ourselves.