Krüsi Hans

Hans Krüsi was a Swiss artist, born in Zurich in 1920 and died in St. Gallen in 1995. As a foster child and later in an orphanage, he grew up in poverty. In 1947 he moved to St. Gallen and became a flower seller. In the mid-1970s he made postcard-sized drawings and paintings on cardboard, wrapping paper or napkins, which he offered for sale together with his flowers. The motifs used were derived from his immediate environment, with the use of cows being particularly striking. In 1980 he was noticed by an art dealer in St. Gall, in whose gallery (the Buchmann Galerie) he exhibited from 1981 onwards. In the period that followed, Hans Krüsi was able to give up his flower stable and focus entirely on making his art . He enjoyed his role as an artist and the fact that he could express himself in “creative experiments”. He made hundreds of audio recordings of church bell ringing, cowbells and bird sounds, made mixed art with photocopies and Polaroid photographs integrated into his art. The innovative use of recycled material, his striking use of colour, the sense of independence and originality that his work conveys, allows us to classify him as outsider art. In a way his work feels contemporary, because of the complicated and self-confident way in which he made art. Hans Krüsi died in 1995 from lung disease. His legacy consists of approximately 4,000 photographs and drawings. Just like negatives, tapes, collages and some prose texts and poems. (BT)