Culture
Famous Artists from Switzerland
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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.
Alberto Giacometti The Couple, Tall Figure, III
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 ...more
Hermann Hesse Lago Maggiore, Casa Bodmer, Piktors Verwandlungen
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 ...more
Alice Bailly Self-Portrait
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
Daniel Spoerri Kichka's Breakfast I
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 ...more
Méret Oppenheim Object, Red Head, Blue Body
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 ...more
Le Corbusier Still Life, Abstract Composition, Still Life Filled with Space
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 ...more
Max Bill Endlose Treppe, Bildsäulen-Dreiergruppe, Combillation
Max Bill was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer.
Jean Tinguely Stravinsky Fountain, Fragment from Homage to New York
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
Robert Frank Men of Air, New York, Ranch Market
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 ...more
Johannes Itten Bewegungsstudie II, Bewegung II, Baumstudie (study)
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 ...more
Melissa Auf der Maur
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
H. R. Giger Penis Landscape
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
Henry Fuseli Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis, Henry Fuseli in Conversation with Johann Jakob Bodmer, The Nightmare
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 ...more
Matthäus Merian
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 ...more
Karl Bodmer Indians Hunting the Bison [State 1], Dacota Woman and Assiniboin Girl, Hunting of the Grizzly Bear
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
Roman Signer Der Tisch, Kayak, Action Kurhaus Weissbad
Roman Signer (born 1938 in Appenzell, Switzerland) is principally a visual artist who works in sculpture, art installations photography, and video.
Anton Graff
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 ...more
Arnold Böcklin Isle of the Dead
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter.
Andreas Heumann
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. ...more
Félix Vallotton
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 ...more
Henry Suso
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 ...more
Cuno Amiet Sommerlandschaft I, Landschaft mit Bäumen und Hügeln, 1905
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 ...more
Gunter Sachs
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 ...more
Christian Marclay Video Quartet
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, ...more