Roger Pfund
Born in 1943.
Died in 2024.
A banknote, a poster, a passport: for Roger Pfund (1943–2024), these familiar objects were surfaces on which images and ideas could circulate. His work spans media and scales, from the sheet held in the hand to exhibition installations. Colour, portraiture and composition give information a sensuous presence.
The creation of banknotes occupies a distinctive place in his career. Together with Elisabeth Pfund, he won a competition organised by the Swiss National Bank in the early 1970s. Their designs were ultimately used for the seventh reserve series, completed in the 1980s and never put into circulation.
Each denomination associates a personality with signs of their activity: on the ten-franc note, Leonhard Euler is set alongside mathematical figures; the twenty-franc note links Horace-Bénédict de Saussure to instruments and Alpine landscapes. Roger Pfund also contributed to the design of the last French banknotes issued before the euro and designed the Swiss passport issued from 2003 onwards. In these projects, the image must tell a story, identify and make the document recognisable, while also meeting security requirements.
Yet his practice cannot be reduced to currency. Posters, painting, furniture, scenography and museum design testify to an open-ended practice, often developed in the studio with other specialists. The Centre culturel suisse in Paris presented a retrospective of his work from 1969 to 1999; in 2013, the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève devoted to him the exhibition Le Multiple et le Singulier.
The title encapsulates a productive tension in his oeuvre: producing images intended for everyone without erasing the painter’s individual exploration.
