Gottfried HONEGGER
(1917 – 2016)
Gottfried Honegger's artistic vision combines an educational dimension with a reflection on the role of the artist in our society.
He opened his first graphic design studio in Zurich in 1937 with the graphic designer Waria Lavater, who was to become his wife. For both artists, advertising was a form of social art.
While in the 1950s his canvases synthesised the emotional and the rational, from 1955 he developed a simple but rigorously defined geometric system, combining colours and formal elements. This is when he created his first Tableaux-Relief. He glued cardboard elements cut out according to a defined grid onto canvas and covered them with several layers of paint.
'I wanted to make art that was individualistic while using a specific geometry. The introduction of relief catches the light. It changes the composition and introduces chance. In this way I was able to combine determinism and chance.'
