Culture
Famous Artists from Switzerland
List of the most popular artists from Switzerland, listed alphabetically with photos when available. For centuries artists have been among the world's most important people, helping chronicle history and keep us entertained with one of the earliest forms of entertainment. You might also be interested in famous Austrian artists and famous artists from Norway. Whether they're known for painting, sculpting, etching or drawing, the famous Swiss artists on this list have kept that tradition alive by creating renowned pieces of art that have been praised around the world. You can find useful information below about these notable Swiss artists, such as when they were born and where their place of birth was.
Examples include Alberto Giacometti and Jean Tinguely.
This list answers the questions, "Which famous artists are from Switzerland?" and "Who are the most well-known Swiss artists?"
For further information on these historic Swiss artists, click on their names. If you're a fine art lover use this list of celebrated Swiss artists to discover some new paintings that you will enjoy.- The Couple, Tall Figure, III
- Birthplace: Borgonovo, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Sculpture, Painting, Drawing
Alberto Giacometti (UK: , US: , Italian: [alˈbɛrto dʒakoˈmetti]; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked ...more - Urs Graf (c. 1485 in Solothurn, Switzerland – possibly before 13 October 1528) was a Swiss Renaissance goldsmith, painter and printmaker (of woodcuts, etchings and engravings), as well as a Swiss ...more
- Lago Maggiore, Casa Bodmer, Piktors Verwandlungen
- Birthplace: Calw, Germany
- Nationality: Switzerland, Germany
- Art Forms: Painting
Hermann Karl Hesse (German: [ˈhɛɐ̯man ˈhɛsə]; July 2, 1877 – August 9, 1962) was a German-born poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass ...more - Self-Portrait
- Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Fauvism, Dada, Cubism
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Painting
Alice Bailly (25 February 1872 – 1 January 1938) was a radical Swiss painter, known for her interpretations on cubism, fauvism, her wool paintings, and her participation in the Dada movement. In ...more - Kichka's Breakfast I
- Birthplace: Galați, Sud-Est, Romania
- Associated periods or movements: Nouveau réalisme
- Nationality: Switzerland
Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930 in Galați) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a ...more - Object, Red Head, Blue Body
- Birthplace: Charlottenburg, Germany
- Associated periods or movements: Surrealism
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Sculpture, Painting
Meret (or Méret) Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer. Oppenheim was a member of the Surrealist movement along with André ...more - Still Life, Abstract Composition, Still Life Filled with Space
- Birthplace: La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
- Nationality: Switzerland, France
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who was better known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern ...more - Endlose Treppe, Bildsäulen-Dreiergruppe, Combillation
- Birthplace: Winterthur, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: De Stijl
- Nationality: Switzerland
Max Bill was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. - Stravinsky Fountain, Fragment from Homage to New York
- Birthplace: Fribourg, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Nouveau réalisme
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Sculpture, Painting
Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as metamechanics) that extended the Dada tradition into the ...more - Men of Air, New York, Ranch Market
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Nationality: Switzerland, United States of America
- Art Forms: Photography
Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) is a Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de ...more - Bewegungsstudie II, Bewegung II, Baumstudie (study)
- Birthplace: Wachseldorn, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Expressionism
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Painting, Drawing
Johannes Itten (11 November 1888 – 25 March 1967) was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus (Staatliches Bauhaus) school. Together with ...more - Melissa Gaboriau Auf der Maur (; born March 17, 1972) is a Canadian musician, singer-songwriter, photographer and actress. Auf der Maur began performing in 1993 after forming the indie rock band ...more
- Penis Landscape
- Birthplace: Chur, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Contemporary art
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Sculpture, Painting
Hans Ruedi Giger ( GHEE-gər; German: [ˈɡiːɡər]; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss painter, best known for airbrush images of humans and machines linked together in a cold biomechanical ...more - Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis, Henry Fuseli in Conversation with Johann Jakob Bodmer, The Nightmare
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Romanticism, Sturm und Drang
- Nationality: Switzerland, United Kingdom
- Art Forms: Painting
Henry Fuseli ( FEW-zə-lee, few-ZEL-ee; German: Johann Heinrich Füssli; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many ...more - Matthäus Merian der Ältere (or "Matthew", "the Elder", or "Sr."; 22 September 1593 – 19 June 1650) was a Swiss-born engraver who worked in Frankfurt for most of his career, where he also ran a ...more
- Indians Hunting the Bison [State 1], Dacota Woman and Assiniboin Girl, Hunting of the Grizzly Bear
- Birthplace: Zürich, Switzerland
- Nationality: Switzerland
Johann Carl Bodmer (11 February 1809 – 30 October 1893) was a Swiss-French printmaker, etcher, lithographer, zinc engraver, draughtsman, painter, illustrator and hunter. Known as Karl Bodmer in ...more - Der Tisch, Kayak, Action Kurhaus Weissbad
- Birthplace: Appenzell, Switzerland
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Sculpture, Photography, Installation art, Video art
Roman Signer (born 1938 in Appenzell, Switzerland) is principally a visual artist who works in sculpture, art installations photography, and video. - Anton Graff (18 November 1736 – 22 June 1813) was an eminent Swiss portrait artist. Among his famous subjects were Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Heinrich von Kleist, Frederick the ...more
- Isle of the Dead
- Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Symbolist literature, Vienna Secession
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Painting
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter. - Andreas Heumann (1946-2017) is a photographer and painter, born in Munich and brought up in Switzerland. On leaving school he began an apprenticeship in Bern to study block-making and printing. He ...more
- Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was a Swiss and French painter and printmaker associated with the group of artists known as Les Nabis. He was an important figure in ...more
- Henry Suso, O.P. (also called Amandus, a name adopted in his writings, and Heinrich Seuse in German), was a German Dominican friar and the most popular vernacular writer of the fourteenth century ...more
- Sommerlandschaft I, Landschaft mit Bäumen und Hügeln, 1905
- Birthplace: Solothurn, Switzerland
- Associated periods or movements: Expressionism
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Art Forms: Sculpture, Painting
Cuno Amiet (28 March 1868 – 6 July 1961) was a Swiss painter, illustrator, graphic artist and sculptor. As the first Swiss painter to give precedence to colour in composition, he was a pioneer of ...more - Fritz Gunter Sachs (14 November 1932 – 7 May 2011) was a German photographer, author, industrialist, and latterly head of an institute that researched claims of astrology. As a young man he became a ...more
- Video Quartet
- Birthplace: San Rafael, California
- Nationality: Switzerland, United States of America
Christian Ernest Marclay (born January 11, 1955) is a visual artist and composer. He holds both American and Swiss nationality. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, ...more
