VISIONARY HALL OF FAME 2

H. R. GIGER

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  H. R. Giger is recognized as one of the world’s foremost artists of Fantastic Realism. Born in 1940 to a chemist’s family in Chur, Switzerland, he moved in 1962 to Zurich, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts. By 1964 he was producing his first artworks, mostly ink drawings and oil paintings, resulting in his first solo exhibition in 1966, followed by the publication and world-wide distribution of his first poster edition in 1969. Shortly after, he discovered the airbrush and, along with it, his own unique freehand painting style, leading to the creation of many of his most well known works, the surrealistic Biomechanical dreamscapes, which formed the cornerstone of his fame. To date, 20 books have been published about Giger’s art.
Giger’s third and most famous book, Necronomicon, published in 1977, served as the visual inspiration for director Ridley Scott’s film Alien, Giger's first film assignment, which earned him the 1980 Oscar for the Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his designs of the film's title character and the stages of its lifecycle, plus the film’s the otherworldly environments. Giger's other film works include Poltergeist II, Alien3 and Species....................................... READ MORE

ABDUL MATI KLARWEIN

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Abdul Mati Klarwein
(April 9, 1932 – March 7, 2002)
Matias Klarwein was born on the 9th of April 1932  in Hamburg, Germany. His father Joseph (born Yusef Ben Menachem), was an  architect working with the Bauhaus movement and his mother Elsa (born Elsa  Kühne), was an opera singer. Mati emigrated with his parents to Israel (then  Palestine) in 1934. During the formation of the new Israel, his father won the
competition to construct the parliament building: the Knesset in Tel Aviv.

At the age of 17, Mati moved to Paris with his mother where he  studied painting at the Academie Julian, the Beaux Arts, as well as with Fernand  Leger (1949-51) and Ernst Fuchs (1952-54) with whom he learned the mixed  technique of the 16th century Flemish school. He made several other fundamental  friendships in France with such personalities as Kitty Lillaz, Boris Vian, and  Salvador Dali. Mati obtained French nationality in 1965 with the help of Mrs.  André Malraux. ............................................................................................................READ MORE

 ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI

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Zdzisław Beksiński
(24 February 1929 -- 22 February 2005)
was a renowned Polish painter and photographer. A Beksiński painting contained elements of surrealism, the post-apocalyptic and immense attention to detail. Despite the grim overtones, he claimed some of these paintings were misunderstood, as they were rather optimistic, or even humouristic. His exhibitions almost always proved very successful. A prestigious exhibition in Warsaw in 1964 proved to be his first major success, as all his paintings were sold. In the 1980s his works gained on popularity in France and he gained significant popularity in Western Europe, the USA and Japan. He soon became the leading figure in contemporary Polish art.

 "Artistic Road of Zdzislaw Beksinski"
By Wieslaw Banach

"...A few sentences are all that is required to present the biography of Zdzislaw Beksinski. He was born on 24th February 1929 in Sanok (now South-Eastern Poland), with which his family had been connected ever since the times of his grandfather Mateusz Beksinski. In 1947, on finishing grammar school in Sanok, Beksinski enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. After graduation in 1952, in compliance with the regulations for the employment of graduates then in force, he lived first in Cracow and later in Rzeszów, and finally, in 1955, returned with his wife to Sanok. .................READ MORE