Franz Gertsch

Franz Gertsch (1930 – 2022) was a Swiss artist internationally renowned for his monumental photorealistic paintings and woodcuts. From the time of his international breakthrough in 1972 at documenta 5 in Kassel he created a wide range of paintings and graphic works, which gained acclaim for their precise, large-scale depictions of subjects he found in his immediate familiar surroundings. Gertsch almost exclusively dedicated his work to portraiture and landscapes, meticulously based on photographs of his own. His work explores the passage of time, perception and surface, blurring the line between photography and painting. In the 1980s, he developed a groundbreaking woodcut technique using hand-crafted tools and natural pigments, creating very large, monochrome prints unlike any other in art history. Gertsch represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1999, and his influence endures through the Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf, Switzerland.