Friedrich Kuhn (1926-1972)

Friedrich Kuhn (1926-1972) is the leading figure in the Zurich movement of the 1950s and 1960s, a counter-balance to the era's dominant abstract/concrete style. Kuhn's eccentric work expresses his will to single-handedly create a style of painting, at once finely tuned and anarchic, between figuration and abstraction and laced with idiosyncratic references to modern mass culture. Admired and often mythologised, Kuhn's paintings have to date been viewed in conjunction with the artist's hyperbolised status as a living legend. This book offers a chance to evaluate the artistic significance of a maverick painter, whose abundant non-academic oeuvre prefigured the trends that shape Swiss art to this day, and provided a bridge to the international art world. Edited by the renowned curator and critic Bice Curiger and richly illustrated, it contains many previously unpublished works by Kuhn and new essays, investigating Kuhn's life and work and explaining the myths surrounding this notorious pop-artist avant la lettre.