HR Giger: The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961-1976

The only book to date to study HR Giger’s art before his legendary work in Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger (1940-2014) was catapulted to international fame in 1979 for designing the inimitable creatures and otherworldly environments that terrified moviegoers who watched Ridley Scott’s Alien. Yet before these iconic creations made him a Hollywood celebrity, Giger was already highly regarded in the international art world for his unique painting style and biomechanical dreamscapes. HR Giger: The Oeuvre Before Alien is the only book to date to document the artist’s lesser-known work.

The new edition of this richly illustrated book traces Giger’s career from his education to the development of his drawing and painting technique to his eventual breakthrough as one of the foremost artists of the fantastic realism school. Featuring unpublished or rarely available early paintings and drawings accompanied by an essay by art historian Beat Stutzer, this volume also sets Giger’s paintings side by side with predecessors such as Goya, Ensor, and Piranesi. HR Giger: The Oeuvre Before Alien illuminates the mind of a visual genius whose first artistic experiments were decades before their time.

Beat Stutzer is director of the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur (Museum of Art of the Grisons) in Chur, Switzerland, and a curator at the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz, Switzerland.