Hans Falk
Born in 1918.
Died in 2002.
Trained in applied arts in Lucerne and then in Zurich, he initially worked as a graphic designer. His posters for social causes, political life, the theatre and the circus combine an immediately legible message with vigorous formal invention. Before undertaking a commission for Knie Circus, he accompanied the troupe for two months: this immersion reflects his need to observe a world before translating it into images.
The posters for the 1964 Swiss National Exhibition are among his public commissions.
At the same time, Falk painted and travelled. His early canvases were figurative; a stay in Cornwall from 1958 onwards, in contact with artists working in abstraction, encouraged him to move away from direct representation. In Stromboli, where he stayed during the 1960s, Informel and gestural painting opened up new paths.
Later, in London and New York, recognisable figures and abstract elements once again came together. His practice therefore does not follow a linear progression from figuration to abstraction: it explores their resources according to place, subject and medium.
Drawing and printmaking remain at the heart of this mobility. The lithograph Tanzpause, held in the graphic collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich, recalls the importance of the body and movement from his earliest printed works onwards. His New York screenprints and book illustrations extend this curiosity about techniques for disseminating images.
The Mobilière Art Collection preserves several works that testify to these passages between modes of expression. His career brings together the effectiveness of graphic art and the freedom of a painter who, from one stay to the next, searches for a new way of seeing.
