Roman Signer
Born in 1938.
Roman Signer lives and works in St. Gallen. He studied art in Zurich (1966–1969) and then in Lucerne (1969–1971), spent a period at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1971–1972), and, according to some sources, was influenced in 1969 by the exhibition When attitudes become form, organised by Harald Szeemann in Bern. Based in St. Gallen as an independent artist since 1972, he was also a lecturer at the Lucerne School of Design from 1974 to 1995.
He has exhibited regularly in Switzerland and internationally since 1973. His participations include the Venice Biennale in 1999 and the Hanover World’s Fair in 2000. His work has been the subject of solo and monographic exhibitions, notably at the Barbican Centre in London ('Slow Movement', 2015) and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2009), and was presented at the Château de Montsoreau-Musée d'art contemporain in 2019.
Museum installations and interventions in public space are mentioned in several cities, particularly Zurich, Appenzell, Aargau and St. Gallen.
The bibliography includes a monograph published by Phaidon (Gerhard Mack et al., 2006), as well as a collection of speeches and interviews published by art&fiction (Roman Signer par lui-même, translated by David Signer, 2019). A documentary road movie directed by Peter Liechti in 1995 is devoted to him.
