Franz Gertsch (Bilingual edition): Die Siebziger / The Seventies

Franz Gertsch (Swiss, born 1930)  is a contemporary Swiss artist known for his large-scale Hyperrealist portraits and landscapes. Projected slides act as source material in creating both woodcuts and paintings. In his attempt to capture the luminosity of life in a photographed subject, Gertsch uses pigments such as lapis lazuli, azurite, and malachite, as well as deviating from the source image when necessary. “The more I focus on the photographic original, the more I move away from it,” he said of his practice. Born on March 8, 1930 in Mörigen, Switzerland, Gertsch received his formal training from the Swiss artists Max von Mühlenen and Hans Rudolf Schwarzenbach in Bern. During the late 1960s, Gertsch began to paint in a Photorealist style, having made expressionistic works as a young man. Over the decades, his works have been included in several prominent exhibitions, including documenta 5 in 1972 and the Venice Biennale in 1999. The artist currently lives and works in Rüschegg, Switzerland. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Lucerne in Switzerland, and the Museum Franz Gertsch, which was built in Burgdorf, Switzerland in honor of his career. – Artnet.com