Josef Felix Müller
Born in 1955.
He lives and works in St. Gallen. From 1971 to 1975, he trained as an embroidery draughtsman, notably in Rebstein and at the School of Design in St. Gallen. He began painting during his apprenticeship and subsequently developed a self-taught practice.
A painter, sculptor, draughtsman and printmaker, he also works with books and lithography.
In the 1980s, his work placed the human body at its centre and addressed sexuality, violence, birth and death without evasion. In 1981, three paintings from the *Drei Nächte – drei Bilder* cycle, exhibited in Fribourg, were seized by the police as obscene publications. Müller challenged this decision before the European Court of Human Rights and prevailed.
From the beginning of the 1980s, he carved figures and groups directly into poplar, lime or willow trunks with a chainsaw and an axe, leaving the roughness of the material and the energy of the gesture visible. *Ohne Titel* (1983), in painted poplar, and *Frau und Mädchen* (1986), also in painted poplar, bear witness to this sculptural practice.
From the mid-1990s onwards, his subjects and forms became more tranquil. Around 2000, he turned towards nature: working from photographs, he painted large-format alpine landscapes, glaciers, forests, springs and plays of light, reworked through successive layers. In 1985, he founded the Vexer publishing house and co-founded the Kunsthalle Saint-Gall, which he directed from 1993 to 1995.
