Hans Rudolf "Rudi" Giger (1940 - 2014) was a Swiss artist famous for his macabre paintings, and especially for creating the image of Alien - the same alien from Ridley Scott's films Alien, Prometheus and Alien:Covenant. Fans of sci-fi horror movies are probably very familiar with them.
Necron IV
As for Giger himself, he often had nightmares of all kinds since adolescence, and to cope with them he transferred the images he dreamed on paper. This is how his famous "biomechanical" painting appeared, which became a peculiar element of mass culture. He created a whole series of artworks "Biomechanoids" and one of his drawings was taken as a prototype for the image of Alien from the movie of the same name.
Giger favored dark and fantastic subjects, wrote scary non-existent creatures, but at the same time they were characterized by a kind of appeal and his artwork was interesting, the more the artist created them in a complex technique, for example, the famous "Portrait of Lee" created using ink, acrylic and photography.
Portrait of Lee
Hans Giger's work has many fans and they do not like it when it is mentioned that Giger created the prototype of Alien. In their opinion - this is an insignificant episode, a hack job to earn money, not worth serious attention. And in general, you should distinguish between mass popsy movie and real painting. But they mention Giger's "Necronomicon" with admiration and do not consider his artwork scary or excessively gloomy - it is a kind of aesthetics, like Bosch's paintings.
Dune
Giger was born in 1940 and, according to his psychologist friend, it was Giger's childhood years during World War II that caused the nightmares that plagued him throughout his life. Hans was just a boy very impressionable and although he was lucky to live in a quiet Switzerland, but he listened to the news, which at that time were not happy. Hans was especially shocked by the reports of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the gruesome details of the results. It was something to give him nightmares.
And little Hans also developed a strange hobby - he collected bones. He even excavated the place where criminals had been executed long ago in an attempt to find a human bone. Hans was especially proud of a human skull, which was given to him by his father, who was aware of his son's hobby, and he kept this skull in a place of honor all his life.
The birth machine
There was one more amusement - a keen interest in guillotines. He was eager to draw them and even built his own, though without a blade, and Giger did not have to test it in practice.
If the case in the present time, Hans would have been taken to a psychologist, or even to a psychiatrist, and the latter would have tried to persistently explain to him that the child's hobbies should be kind and light. But Giger's parents did not pay much attention to his oddities - he would play and forget about them when he grew up and had to do real work. In general, they were right. He still had nightmares, but he knew how to deal with them.
Portrait of Barbara
When Giger graduated from high school, he began working part-time for various magazines, selling his drawings to editors. Then he published entire collections of his artwork in the style of fantastic realism, where he realized his dark fantasies on paper, which, however, were quite in demand - the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as numerous tests of nuclear weapons, clearly showed what can lead to its thoughtless use.
Atomic children
What is scary is what can happen, and if dark fantasies are still encapsulated in an interesting artistic form, then we should not be surprised at the demand for such drawings by Giger, even if they are infinitely far from the classical notions of beauty. It was very easy for Giger to create his unusual images - they simply appeared to him in his dreams. But he, accustomed to nightmares, already from childhood little afraid of anything in real life, because he could hide for hours in a dark basement, which became a favorite place in childhood.
Giger became famous by publishing the book "Necronomicon", which has nothing to do with Lovecraft's works. As early as 1968, he drew illustrations for the series "Biomechanoids" - special creatures that are a combination of biological life forms and technology.
Biomechanoids
Perhaps something like this could be grown by a highly advanced civilization and used as soldiers. In the spirit of dystopian science fiction. Since then, Giger has been presented as the founder of Biomechanical Art. Well, in popular culture, Giger is known as the father of Alien. Too popular was the famous movie by Ridley Scott and subsequent sequels. But Giger was not particularly upset that it was Alien that overshadowed all his other artworks. "Each of my images is like a child, an artistic embodiment of my nightmares and fantasies, and my own children are taken to love and be proud of them."
New York - Cross Traffic
Giger often painted using dark, somber colors and shades, with a lot of metallic sheen, and often used an airbrush - which takes a lot of skill, as his artwork is very detailed, and one wonders how Giger could work with such a far from precise tool, more suited for painting or graffiti on walls than actual paintings.
And he painted very authentically, for which he once paid the price. Overly vigilant customs officials detained the artist, thinking his artwork was photography. Only when he demonstrated his airbrush in action they let him go. Giger long afterward resented: "Where could I have photographed all this? In Hell or in special secret laboratories?"
Carmen
Giger died very prosaically - he simply fell down the stairs at the age of 74. Many did not even believe in such an ordinary death - too mysterious aura surrounded him and the artwork he created. According to some desperate dreamers, it would be more logical if Giger returned to his home planet (like Presley, Tsoi, Dezl and other idols) or, at the worst, died of an overdose of hallucinogens, having painted his last, most terrible and memorable picture.
But there is no absolute certainty that none of Giger's dark fantasies will ever materialize in the future, even if not in such an artistic form. There is cloning of organs, robotics is developing by leaps and bounds. The development of modern technology makes many things possible, including the creation of his biomechanical creatures, although it would be very desirable that they remain on paper as scary warnings.
Buy handmade goods or modern art you can on artAlebrio - is an international marketplace for people who want to create, sell, buy and collect unique items and art - buy the best with us artAlebrio.com.
By confirming your order you unconditionally accept these General Conditions of Sale
