Hans Stocker
Born in 1896.
Died in 1983.
Hans Stocker (1896–1983) was a Basel painter and stained-glass artist. After an apprenticeship in artistic metalwork at the Basel School of Arts and Crafts, he studied painting with Georg Albrecht Mayer. Stays in Geneva, Italy and Paris brought him into contact with the work of Hodler and Cézanne, as well as with French artistic circles.
In 1928, together with his brother Ernst Stocker, known as Coghuf, and several colleagues, he helped found Rot-Blau II, a group that renewed Basel’s artistic life. Sacred art became an important dimension of his career. In 1926, he won the competition for the stained-glass windows of St Anthony’s Church in Basel, which he produced with Otto Staiger between 1927 and 1930.
He subsequently designed stained-glass windows, murals and mosaics for religious and public buildings. At the same time, he painted landscapes, portraits and figurative compositions in a visual language in which structured colour and synthetic forms retained a central place. From 1954 to 1960, he served as president of the Federal Fine Arts Commission.
His work bears witness to the dialogue between pictorial modernity and monumental commissions in twentieth-century Switzerland.
