Hans Erni (1909-2015) Swiss, Lithograph of Nudes. Title: "Vier Madchen" (Four Girls). Pencil signed bottom right. Pencil numbered XII/C (12/100) bottom left. 

Overall: 42 X 33 in. 

Sight: 35 1/2 X 23 in. 

#3858 . 

Hans Erni was born in 1909 in Lucerne, Switzerland, the third of eight siblings and the son of a cabin cruiser engineer. Although he considered following in his father’s footsteps for a time and even apprenticed as a surveyor, Erni eventually gave up work as a draftsman to attend the city’s Kunstgewerbeschule, a type of vocational arts school, in 1927. He followed this with further studies of art in Paris, where he took lessons at the Académie Julian, before moving to Berlin in 1931. He came to admire Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in particular, and in 1933 he joined the artist’s group Abstraction-Création in Paris, where he met Hans Arp, Alexander Calder, and Wassily Kandinsky, whose influence caused him to experiment with abstract art. Upon returning to Switzerland in the late 1930s he began producing posters and murals, and gained fame for his postage stamp designs and a massive 300 foot long fresco for Switzerland’s National Exhibition in 1939. From 1940 to 1945 he was a soldier in the Swiss Army serving as a camouflage painter. However, the rise of the Nazis and his time among the revolutionary artists in Western Europe led him to espouse Communism. The Swiss government disavowed association with him, canceling his design for new banknotes and forbidding him from leaving the country to attend the São Paulo Art Biennale. In 1946 he married fellow artist Gertrud Bohnert, who was a competitor alongside him in the 1948 Summer Olympics’ painting competitions, but she died in a horse-riding accident only a few months afterwards, leaving him with a baby girl to raise. She grew up to be an artist as well: Simone Fornara Erni. In 1949 he met and married Doris Kessler, with whom he would have three more children. In the early 1950s he turned away from Communism after learning of the horrors of Stalin’s purges, but remained a staunch and vocal pacifist the rest of his life, and was eventually officially praised once again by his home country for his poster work on the 1984 Olympics. Erni created his first ceramic works and discovered lithography in the mid 1950s, leading to his most prolific period of output. In 1972 he set up his studio in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, but maintained his home in Lucerne, where he was able to create his own museum to house his work. During his life he produced over 300 posters, dozens of murals, roughly 200 illustrations for books, and designs for approximately 90 stamps. Erni was awarded with numerous prizes in the post-War era, including the UN Peace Medal and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Swiss government in 2009. His works have been internationally exhibited across the globe, including solo shows in Chicago, New Delhi, Funabashi, and Milan. He died on March 21st, 2015, aged 106, and his work is on permanent display at numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Harvard Art Museums.