Scheidegger und Spiess AG, Verlag – förlag

The art of HR Giger (1940–2014), Swiss-born creator of the legendary monster in Ridley Scott's movie Alien, is currently experiencing a renaissance and is featured in exhibitions as well as in magazines around the globe. This lavish large-format volume offers never-before-seen insights into Giger's private house and garden, both of which are populated by biomechanical sculptures, airbrush paintings, Alien furniture, objects, prints, and self-portraits. French photographer Camille Vivier—best known for her work for Stella McCartney and Cartier—enjoyed exclusive access to the artist’s Zurich home and studio for this book, where she worked on her own as well as with models in a series of photo sessions.Vivier’s around 200 photographs form an atmospheric tribute to the arguably most distinguished representative of Fantastic Realism. In addition to images of Giger’s studio and his life-size sculptures, Vivier has also documented some hundred objects and artworks, as well as his famous Alien-style garden railroad. An essay by French publicist Farbrice Paineu places HR Giger’s art in the wider context of pop culture and the genre of horror movies.Text in English and German.

Marcel Gautherot (1910-96) is regarded by many as one of the most significant French photographers. Yet his work is relatively little known and even less published. The most famous part of his work is the body of some 3,000 images documenting the construction of Brasilia 1958-1960. This, and other images he took of this extraordinary place until the 1970s, is widely appreciated as a high point of 20th-century architectural photography.Gautherot began an education in architecture but very soon took up photography as well. He travelled extensively in France and abroad and visited Brazil and Peru for the first time in 1939, before being drafted into the French army on the outbreak of World War II. Upon demobilisation in summer 1940 he returned to Brazil and made Rio de Janeiro his home for the rest of his life.The new book Marcel Gautherot: The Monograph is the first ever comprehensive book on Gautherot's entire work as a photographer. It features some 200 of his striking pictures from all stages of his career, superbly reproduced in tritone printing. The images are complemented by essays on his affinity for modern architecture, his contribution to the history of photography, and on his attachment to Brazil.

Hannah Höch (1889–1978) moved between differing worlds: as an editorial assistant with a major Berlin-based magazine publisher, and as the only woman who could hold her own in the German capital’s vibrant Dada scene of the 1920s. Höch broke with the traditions of representation and vision. Her works dissected a world marked by the catastrophe of the Great War and an intense consumer culture, and reassembled it in revolutionary, poetic, and often ironic ways. Höch kept to her artistic means and her poetic-radical imagination, shimmering between social observation and dream world, even in the post-WWII period. Scissors and glue were the weapons of her art of montage, of which she was a co-inventor.Cutting and montage also shaped film, still a new medium in the 1920s, which strongly influenced Höch’s art: she understood her assembled pictures as static films. This richly illustrated and expertly annotated book explores comprehensively for the first time Höch’s fascination with film and the visual culture of the modern industrial age. It demonstrates how montage evolved in a field of tension between artistic experimentation, commercial exploitation, and political appropriation. A text-collage on the history of montage, in which major protagonists of Modernism and Avant-garde such as Sergej Eisenstein, Raoul Hausmann, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttman, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, and Dsiga Wertow, have their say, rounds out the volume.

Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and a pioneer of modernism, is also referred to as the patriarch of modern sculpture. From A as in Africa to S as in Studio, D as in Dance, F as in Furniture or R for Reflections, this lavishly illustrated volume takes the open form of a dictionary to present Brancusi’s celebrated art in its full richness. More than 110 entries contributed by leading Brancusi specialists form a complete panorama of his career, from his native Romania to Paris, where he established himself in 1903, and to the United States, where his work was on display for the first time at New York’s legendary 1913 Armory Show.Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the book sheds new light on Brancusi's creative process, his relationship with materials, his use of film, photography, and drawing, and his taste for music. It also addresses the global reception of his work and analyses the views on it taken by the writers and critics of his time. Moreover, it explores as well the significance of Brancusi's art today, highlighting its resonance with contemporary artists.

“Few architects are as patient and exacting as Peter Zumthor, and this monograph captures the materiality and intangible spirit of his work in drawings, photographs, and his brief texts. It was an inspired idea to divide this rich concentration of work into five slim volumes, rather than cram it into one of the mega-publications that entomb other celebrated architects. Each is a delight to hold and page through, and a model of Swiss design from the gray silk covers to the crisp typography and spacious layouts. Rarely has haptic architecture been better expressed in print.” Michael Webb, The Architects Newspaper, on the 2014 edition“With the same rigor and poetry of his architecture Zumthor offers us his opera omnia. But so laconic is he that who knows if this is the last.” Eduardo Prieto, ArcitecturaViva, on the 2014 editionPeter Zumthor, 2009 Pritzker laureate, is one of the best-known and most acclaimed architects of the present day. Widely admired for his precision and thoroughness, he creates buildings that are responsive to their location and function, and that are remarkable both for their materials and the atmospheric quality of the spaces they enclose.This five-volume survey of his work until 2013 features 43 buildings and projects, including some that have never been published before. On 856 pages with more than 750 photographs, plans, sketches, drawings and watercolours, and with texts written by Peter Zumthor himself specially for this monograph, it documents a wide range of projects from several world-famous buildings to some that never left the drawing board.The first edition of 2014 won the 2014 Filaf d'argent (Festival International du Livre d'Art & du Film) and of the 2014 DAM Architectural Book Award.

On 26 May 2026, Miles Davis (1926–91), an icon of jazz and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, would have celebrated his centenary. This book, published to mark the occasion, brings together photographs of Miles Davis taken by German photographer and documentary filmmaker Ralph Quinke between 1971 and 1989. The centrepiece is a reportage that was photographed in 1989: together with Swiss journalist Marco Meier, Quinke travelled to Malibu to accompany the artist for three days and interview him for an issue of Swiss art and culture magazine Du. He got surprisingly close with his camera, taking shots of Miles boxing, in his car, in the kitchen, while painting, sometimes posing, or as an observer of him in conversation.Du’s issue 843 of August 1989, in which Quinke and Meier’s reportage featured, is long out of print and still sought-after by Miles fans. Inspired by German music journalist and jazz expert Arne Reimer, this photo book draws on Quinke’s unique archive material. A revised version of the 1989 interview and a new conversation between Quinke, Meier, and Reimer supplement this “director’s cut.”A selection of the best images that Quinke took of Miles Davis between 1971 and 1987 rounds off this unique homage to one of the most eminent personalities of all musical genres.Text in English and German.

The dishwasher has robbed the good old kitchen towel of some of its practical significance. Nevertheless, it remains present in many households, hand-woven or industrially produced, lint-free or absorbent, dirty or clean, inherited or replaceable. In some kitchens, special attention is also required, as there is one for the hands and one for the dishes.For a long time, specially made kitchen towels were a luxury and reserved for the upper classes. Industrial mass production has changed this, and today two developments can be observed: while kitchen towels are displayed as design objects in museum stores and craft stores, they are also standardised cheap goods.In The Tea Towel: Perspectives on an Everyday Item, 13 authors, artists, and designers enter into a dialogue with the object and examine it from a literary, journalistic, artistic, technical, and socio-political perspective. The contributions of very different tones complement each other and create new references. In text and images, the book encourages a rediscovery of the everyday kitchen towel as a sensual object with which many socially relevant topics are associated.

Since 2015, Swiss photographer Goran Potkonjak has visited 10 major Asian cities: Bangkok, Busan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Shenzhen, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo. His large-scale art project documents these megacities and their architecture through images taken from two different viewpoints: from the upper floors of high-rise buildings and at street level. The result is a multilayered, precise view of each of these vibrant metropolises.The View Out of My Window brings together 200 photographs from this artistic research - 20 views of each city. The book thus reveals the essence of our urban present in a fascinating way: such vast cities thrive on their contradictions, in which inexhaustible energy often alternates with surprising calmness. Goran Potkonjak’s images impressively illustrate this balance.Text in English and German.

Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger (1940–2014) achieved international fame in 1979 for designing the fantastic creatures and eerie environments that terrified moviegoers in Ridley Scott’s science fiction film Alien. Yet before these iconic creations made him a celebrity and won him an Oscar for visual effects, Giger was already highly regarded in the international art world for his unique freehand painting style and biomechanical dreamscapes.HR Giger: The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961–1976, first published in 2007 and now becoming available again in a new edition, is the only book to date to document the artist’s lesser known, but no less impressive, early work. This lavishly illustrated volume traces Giger’s career from his education as an architect and industrial designer at the Zurich College of Art to the development of his ink drawing and oil painting technique and his eventual breakthrough as one of the foremost artists of the fantastic realism school. Featuring many unpublished or rarely available early paintings and drawings, and accompanied by an essay by noted art historian Beat Stutzer, this volume juxtaposes Giger’s paintings with works by his predecessors, including Ensor, Fuseli, Goya, and Piranesi.HR Giger: The Oeuvre Before Alien illuminates the mind of a visual genius whose first artistic experiments were decades ahead of their time.

Over centuries, the transnational Alpine region Tyrol - South Tyrol - Trentino (Alto Adige) has developed along ancient trade routes between Germany and Austria on one side of the Alps and northern Italy on the other. Similar to the region's modern and contemporary architecture, its product design is in many cases rooted in a rich local tradition of craftsmanship. Yet since the 1920s, this multi-lingual region has also proven its remarkable openness to European modernism's most progressive movements and become an unexpected laboratory for technical and formal exploration in the middle of the continent. Design from the Alps, published to coincide with an exhibition at museum Kunst Meran in autumn 2019, tells the story of a century of product design from Tyrol - South Tyrol - Trentino, highlighting the vast variety of discoveries and innovations that have emerged there. Featured artists include, among others, Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), whose experiments were inspired by the Secondo Futurismo, Gino Pollini (1903-91), a pioneer of the interwar period, as well as the celebrated architects and designers Lois Welzenbacher (1889-1955), Clemens Holzmeister (1886-1983), and Ettore Sottsas (1917-2007). Lavishly illustrated, the book follows the many protagonists of this at the same time heterogenous and collectively strong scene and offers an insightful tour d'horizon of the multifaceted design culture of western Austria and northern Italy. Design from the Alps (Kunst Meran, Merano, Italy, 11 October 2019 to 12 January 2020).Text in English, German and Italian.

Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui, born in 1935, is a pioneer of video art and art education in Switzerland. Beginning in 1975, she worked in collaboration with her husband Chérif Defraoui (1932–1994). Together they developed the Archives du Futur, a reflection on images, their status, and potential for memory and the future. The two artists also founded the legendary Atelier Médias Mixtes at Geneva’s École supérieure des Beaux-Arts (now HEAD—Genève). Since 1995, Defraoui has pursued a practice using various forms of expression, including projection, installation, ceramics, and serigraphy.This book is part of the new On Words series that presents conversations with contemporary women artists. Through them, readers come to understand the sources from which they draw inspiration, the themes in their work, and their view of the world. Edited by Julie Enckell, Federica Martini, and Sarah Burkhalter and bringing together a wide range of viewpoints, the On Words series adds a new narrative to polyphonic art history as told by those who actively shape it.Text in English and French.

Upon setting foot in Dhaka, with its beautifully landscaped gardens adorning ancient mosques and monuments, it becomes clear that this is a city steeped in history. One of the oldest settlements in Bangladesh, it is today among the largest cities in the world, and rapid, often unplanned, urbanisation has vastly outpaced sustainability, threatening the historic buildings and communities that make up the city's cultural soul. But, despite bursting at the seams, Dhaka's six centuries of history are still visible if we look carefully in the shadows of the tall buildings, in the spaces between the speeding cars.Dhaka-based architect Kashef Chowdhury's camera captures a record of the capital city of the local character that may soon be lost due to urban development. In Chowdhury's photographs, a woman hangs sheets of polythene to dry and resell, a blind man sings mystic love songs. Other photographs reflect Dhaka's state of social and cultural flux, like an image of weary night-shift workers returning from a wholesale market in the late morning or of the barely visible lights of a pick-up truck concealed to prevent theft. Chowdhury is one of South Asia's most renowned architects, and Dhaka: Memories or Lost constitutes his deeply personal tribute to the city.

In 2015, the Swiss Musée Jenisch Vevey received a bequest that also comprised around 2,000 Japanese coloured woodblock prints (ukiyo-e). Many of them originate from the workshops of the most famous artists of the Utagawa school, who were active between 1765 and 1930 and are rarely represented in European collections. They stand out due to their fine printing technique, the use of precious materials and vibrant colours, as well as their excellent state of preservation. The collection also includes some 350 sketches and final preparatory drawings pasted onto the block for printing (shita-e), which are usually destroyed during the printing process. They offer an impressive insight into the artists’ creative process before a final drawing is submitted to the printer for execution.Impressions of Japan features 200 ukiyo-e, shita-e, and sketches from the mid 19th to early 20th century. They depict kabuki theatre scenes, textile art, the joys and pleasures of Japanese society, famous fairy tales, travelling in and around the landscapes of Japan. Scholarly essays and an appendix offering explanations of printmaking techniques, types of paper used, and about printmaking in 21st-century Japan supplement the images. The beautifully designed book will appeal particularly to experts and lovers of coloured Japanese woodblock prints.

Swiss artist, architect, designer, typographer, and theorist Max Bill (1908-94) was one of the most important exponents of concrete and constructive art and a key figure in the history of 20th-century European applied arts and design. Educated by such eminent teachers as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Bill immediately displayed a genius for work in fields as diverse as painting, sculpture, architecture, typography and design from the outset of his career in the 1930s. In the 1950s, he teamed up with Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher to found the legendary Ulm College of Design in Ulm, of which he became the first director. In his work, Max Bill carried on the Bauhaus legacy, both as an artist and a teacher, and made a decisive and lasting contribution to 20th-century cultural life.The new edition of this authoritative and much sought-after monograph displays Bill's wide-ranging work and sets him in the context of his cultural milieu by featuring works by his contemporaries, such as Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky, and Donald Judd. Accompanying essays investigate Bill's influence on other artists and the lasting importance of his oeuvre in the present.Text in English and German.

Max Bill (1908–1994), a key figure of modernism in his native Switzerland and internationally, was a true renaissance man. Equally accomplished as a painter, sculptor, graphic and product designer, and architect, he was also an eminent theorist and educator, curator, and prolific publicist. Moreover, he engaged in Swiss politics and was an activist both in Switzerland and abroad. Throughout his career he connected with fellow artists and other leading figures of modernism, maintaining a lifelong and worldwide artistic and political dialogue.This book, published in conjunction with a major exhibition at Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, takes a fresh look both at Bill’s remarkable achievements across his diverse fields of creative activity and at his international network, highlighting his contribution to art and society as a whole. Max Bill Global features some 120 of Bill’s own works in all disciplines and a selection of his designed products that went into industrial production, as well as work by some of his artist friends. Published alongside are topical essays investigating Bill’s interaction and networking with fellow artists in Dessau, Paris, Zurich, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and New York.

This colourfully illustrated book gives a broad introduction to the life and work of Asger Jorn (1914-73), one of the most significant Scandinavian artists. After an artistic education in Paris, including collaborations with Fernand Léger and Le Corbusier, Jorn created a vast oeuvre of paintings, prints, tapestries, ceramics, collages and sculpture, characterized by a continuous effort to radically renew any of the media he was working with. He was also a founding member of various international art movements, such as CoBrA or the Situationist International , theorized about art and assembled an exquisite collection of European avant-garde art. This new book presents a selection of Jorn's key works and also features many original documents, such as interviews, letters and photographs, as well as articles by and about Jorn. Arranged in chapters focusing on crucial moments of his life or works of particular significance for his career, it illustrates the diversity of Jorn's artistic and literary production and reveals his highly ironic and poetic approach to various topics in art, politics and philosophy.

This is the first book to set the work of British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003) in its international context. Chadwick, a leading figure in modern British art and celebrated for his innovative steel and bronze sculptures of abstracted, expressive figures and animals, always felt that his work was better understood abroad than in his native country. In this richly illustrated monograph, distinguished British scholar and writer Michael Bird, and eminent American art historian and curator Marin R. Sullivan chart the different phases of Chadwick's long career. They vividly locate his art within the wider narrative of European and American post-war sculpture. They examine in particular the reception and promotion of Chadwick's sculpture in the United States, and how a collection of some 140 of his works at the Berman Museum in rural Pennsylvania came to be.

Since 2009, historian and photographer Philipp Sarasin has been travelling the globe for his visual research on major cities and megacities. He visited Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Cairo, Nairobi, Dubai, Mumbai, Beijing, Jakarta, Panama City, and 10 other places, driven by his search for a relevant photographic image of the world in which we live. It is an urban world for more than half of humanity—and the trend is going up.The Big City features some 120 of Sarasin’s colour photographs that are marked by his analytical observing eye. His focus is on urban space with all its images and signs, embedded in the faceless architecture that shapes 21st-century cities. Sarasin’s shots are neither architectural photography in the narrow sense nor classic street photography. He follows the tradition of urban photography, inspired in particular by the concepts of artists such as Stephen Shore, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall.An essay by architectural historian and curator Martino Stierli and an introduction by Philipp Sarasin supplement the full-page colour plates in this striking volume.Text in English and German.

The term “migration of form” describes a curatorial method that takes aim at the contradictions of the Western museum traditions and the ways exhibitions we have been conceived and designed. The method addresses transcultural entanglements in the past and present from which objects emerge, rather than working with distinctions such as art and non-art or cultural identities and concepts such as “Africa” or “Renaissance.” It proposes a new type of museum for global audiences that serves as a platform for discourses on urgent sociopolitical topics and as a space of experimentation with new ideas and forms of display.This book explains and applies the “migration of form” by offering insights into the curatorial method Roger M. Buergel has experimented with at Zurich’s Johann Jacobs Museum and other venues in Europe and Asia. Descriptions of single exhibitions on global trade, raw materials, or artists such as Maya Deren and Allan Sekula are complemented by concise texts which illuminate the theoretical foundations of the curatorial process. Richly illustrated, the volume invites a timely and broadened view of art and cultural history.

Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui realised a significant part of her work beginning in 1975 together with her husband Chérif (1932–1994). Silvie and Chérif Defraoui compiled their photo and video works, installations, sculptures, and performances under the title Archives du Futur. They taught together at Geneva’s École supérieure des Beaux- Arts (today HEAD–Genève), where they founded the legendary studio Média Mixte and counted a number of renowned artists among their students. The Archives du Futur, to which Silvie Defraoui has continued adding works since Chérif’s premature death, has been made available as a digital catalogue raisonné to browse online. This book accompanies, supplements, and expands on the digital documentation. It gathers 14 commentaries on individual works of the two artists by distinguished art theorists and curators, originally published from 1984 onwards, in various art journals and exhibition catalogues or newly written for this book.They reflect on the artists’ joint oeuvre as well as on work created independently by Silvie Defraoui. Interviews with her and selected lecture texts from the couple’s shared teaching activities shed light on their artistic stance and thematic focuses.The volume invites an exploration of an artistic body of work that is highly topical through its merging of dualities - memory and the present, Orient and Occident, man and woman, tradition and invention.Text in English, French and German.

When an apple falls to the ground, we see the effect of gravity. Yet not all laws of nature are as apparent. Swiss artist Barbara Ellmerer uses invisible principles of physics, biology, and cosmology as her starting point and translates them into paintings. She sends us into the realm of colours and shapes in which forces, movements, and processes from nature are synonymously realised and palpable. Ellmerer thereby also captures something inexplicable, which reminds us of how steeped in wonder the world still is.Barbara Ellmerer - Sense of Science presents a selection of oil paintings and works on paper created by the artist between 2010 and 2020. Ellmerer’s sometimes large-format pictures are shown both in full as well as in enlarged details to show the intricacies of her brush stroke, colour qualities, surfaces, depths, movements, and emphases. This combination also makes productive use of the migration of media - from painting to photography - and its reproduction in the book. In an accompanying essay, Laura Corman, a quantum physicist, explains how Ellmerer’s art relates to natural science. A contribution by Nadine Olonetzky, culture journalist and photo expert, describes art’s capabilities of rendering invisible processes comprehensible.Text in English and German.

In summer 2017, celebrated Swiss architect Peter Zumthor curated the exhibition Dear to Me at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, marking the 20th anniversary of one of his most famous designs. Part of the program were conversations with philosophers, curators, historians, composers, writers, photographers, collectors, and craftsmen that Zumthor had invited to contribute to the exhibition. His dialogues with them offer insights into the thoughts and practice of fascinating personalities. Together with his counterparts, he explores artistic preferences and practices, reasonings, as well as practical knowledge from artisanal experience. Always charming and affectionate, he follows-up persistently, and takes his guests with gentle determination on mutual intellectual strolls.The equally serious and serene conversations with Anita Albus, Aleida Assmann, Marcel Beyer, Hélène Binet, Hannes Böhringer, Renate Breuss, Claudia Comte, Bice Curiger, Esther Kinsky, Ralf Konersmann, Walter Lietha, Olga Neuwirth, Rebecca Saunders, Karl Schlögel, Martin Seel, Ruedi Walli, and Wim Wenders are collected in 17 booklets held together in an exquisitely manufactured box. An 18th complementary booklet documents the Dear to Me exhibition in Bregenz through concise texts, images, drawings and plans.

In the 1920s, German-Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) began his long-lasting engagement with polyphonic art—multi-voiced way of painting analogous to music. A relentless experimenter, Klee began these studies while teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, developed them further during his tenure at the art academy in Düsseldorf, and brought them to conclusion after his return to Switzerland in 1933. In this book, distinguished art historian Oskar Bätschmann explores Klee’s seminal painting Ad Parnassum (1932). Painted shortly after the artist’s departure from the Bauhaus, it symbolises a new era, also one of Klee’s own self-discovery. Bätschmann documents how the artist strove for a connection of music and painting in his colour hues and in the rhythmic movement of coloured dots.Richly illustrated, this book places Klee’s polyphonic understanding of art in an art-historical context by using this key work and offers insight into the synesthetic thinking that emerged in the art world during that time.Text in English and German.

The Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, one of the most renowned photography museums in Europe, has awarded the Prix Elysée biannually since 2014. Young photo artists are invited to submit a photo book project with the prize being the realisation of the winning submission, which constitutesa major step in an artist-photographer’s career.Thisbook documents the Prix Elysée’s fourth edition. It features the work submitted by the eight nominees Alexa Brunet, Arguine Escandón & Yann Gross, Magali Koenig, Thomas Mailaender, Moises Saman, Assaf Shoshan, Alys Tomlinson, and Kurt Tong. Sketches, first drafts, and photographic studies illustrate the progress of their projects, from initial concept to image selection and design. Conversations with the artists published alongside reflect on their close collaboration with the museum and expand on the visual portfolios. The individual creative process thus becomes visible, and at the same time, a cross-section of contemporary art photography production emerges. Text in English and French.

What kind of fashion exists without mass production, without Hollywood and international fashion weeks? In Switzerland, far from the international spotlight and the dictates of the major fashion hubs, small labels, collectives, and young graduates as well as established brands test their potential for greatness. Creative designers take initiative and position themselves in Berlin, join the fashion circus in Paris, or establish clever business models at home in Switzerland.Wild Thing - The Swiss Fashion Scene, published in conjunction with an exhibition at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, puts a spotlight on this development and the products resulting from it. The book picks up on current topics - such as minimalism and the questioning of assigned gender identities - that shape designs, design concepts, and processes. Lavishly illustrated, it features looks and creations by important labels, selected outfits, textile inventions, and collection presentations. Together with brief interviews, portraits of individual designers, and text contributions, Wild Thing - The Swiss Fashion Scene is a highly attractive snapshot of Switzerland’s creative and vibrant fashion scene.In addition, the book contains links to short print-in-motion videos, which can be watched by pointing a smartphone camera at the corresponding image. The videos offer portraits of designers, interviews with fashion experts, and contributions from fashion schools.Text in English and German.

Luigi Pericle (1916–2001) was a rare talent—a self-taught illustrator and painter, a man of letters, mystic, theosophist, and intellectual whose work and legacy eludes any categorization. Under his proper name Pericle Luigi Giovanetti he had great success as an illustrator and cartoonist in the 1950s. His cartoons were published worldwide in daily newspapers, such as the Washington Post or Herald Tribune, as well as in satirical magazines like Punch. His comic strip Max the Marmot, published in newspapers and books, was hugely popular across Europe, the United States, and Japan.In 1958, he turned to explore abstract expression through painting and ink drawing. He quickly gained international recognition as an artist and his paintings were exhibited in gallery and museum shows in Britain and Switzerland during the 1960s. Yet recognition was not what he was looking for, and he disappeared voluntarily from the art world to lead an increasingly secluded life dedicated entirely to his art and writing. His home Casa San Tomaso on the legendary Monte Verità in Ascona, in southern Switzerland, offered ideal surroundings for an artist so strongly drawn to spirituality.Luigi Pericle. Ad Astra, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the MASI Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, offers a fresh look at how the spiritual environment and tradition of Monte Verità influenced Pericle as an artist and how Asian calligraphy and Zen Buddhism were influential to his drawing practice. Moreover, the book investigates Pericle’s understanding of abstraction in art and his own syncretism of modern mysticism.Text in English, German and Italian.

The use of pictures to communicate a story has a long tradition in Japanese culture that dates back more than a thousand years. Such narrative illustrations draw on Buddhist texts, classic literature, poetry, and theatrical scenes to create rich visual imagery realised in a wide range of media and format. Quotations from and allusions to heroic epics and romances were disseminated through exquisite paintings, woodblock prints, and in pieces of applied arts such as lacquer ware or ceramics, thus becoming anchored in the collective consciousness. As story-telling art found expression in a variety of materialities, it became an integral part of daily life. A fascinating narrative space evolved that combined artistic excellence and aesthetic pleasure.Love, Fight, Feast features some one hundred paintings, woodblock prints, illustrated woodblock-printed books, as well as lacquer and metal objects, porcelain, and textiles from the 13th to the 20th century, alongside scholarly essays on a range of aspects of Japanese narrative art. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the renowned Museum Rietberg in Zurich, the book offers a unique survey of the multifaceted, colourful, and imaginative world of Japanese narrative art across eight centuries.

Photographer and artist Andrea Garbald (1877–1958) dedicated an important part of his oeuvre to the women of his native Val Bregaglia, in the Swiss canton of Grisons. As the first and, for a long time, the only photographer in the valley, he ran his own photo studio in addition to an optician’s store in the village of Castasegna. Yet instead of making his artistic work public, Garbald kept his it in his attic. His estate was only discovered in the mid-1980s and displayed in public for the first time in 2014 in a major exhibition.Andrea Garbald’s portraits collected in this volume show women of different ages and social classes and go far beyond the stiff official portraits that were common at the time. The sitters’ posture, clothes, faces, and their eyes speak volumes: the photographs demonstrate a special intimacy and empathy towards the people portrayed. At the same time, they reveal the development of the medium and its visual language.This new book provides an in-depth look at Garbald’s unusual oeuvre and offers an insight into the subtle creativity of this local pioneer.Text in Italian and German.

David Chipperfield’s new building for the Kunsthaus Zürich now stands in all its splendour on Zurich’s Heimplatz, opposite the old museum building of 1910 designed by Karl Moser. Its opening to the public in October 2021 will make the Kunsthaus Zürich Switzerland’s largest art museum.Following the two previous volumes on Kunsthaus Zürich’s architectural history and the design for turning it into an art museum for the twenty-first century, this book documents the genesis of David Chipperfield’s extension from proposal through political debates about the entire project to completed structure. It features a foreword by David Chipperfield and an essay by Christoph Felger, executive architect for the project at David Chipperfield Architects Berlin, that discusses the design concept, the promise made with it, and its fulfilment. A conversation between Christoph Felger, the director of the City of Zurich’s Building Surveyor's Office Wiebke Rösler, and Kunsthaus Zürich’s director Christoph Becker, and architecture critic Sabine von Fischer, as well as numerous illustrations and plans sound out this new volume.Text in French.