Hans Rudolf Giger
Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger ( 1940–2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, whose style was adapted for many forms of media, including record-albums, furniture and tattoo-art…“Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don’t really think it is,” he once said. Born Hans Ruedi Giger on February 5, 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, he went on to study architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts in Zürich. His first successful attempt at reaching audiences with visual art came in 1969, when a painting of his was published as a poster. Giger cited Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí as major influences on his stylizations of bodies and machinery.