Description

HR Giger Di-Litho ‘The Tourist IX’

Hans Ruedi Giger (1940-2014)

Di-Litho ‘The Tourist’ after the original ink wash drawing 1982

Based on the screenplay by Clair Noto dd. 1980

Special non-authorized edition by Bolermo (2008)

Printed single-sided on heavy designer paper.

Specifications

✓ Size: 42 cm x 29,5 cm (16.8″ x 11.8″)

✓ Signed in the plate – numbered on reverse.

✓ 1st edition of 7 prints (see reverse)

✓ Certification (COA) on the reverse side of litho.

Attention: there are no prints or lithos available of this drawing, they have never been made due to the refusal of HR Giger and heirs who hold the rights – just some postcards have been printed which are available in the Museum.

Therefore this non-authorized di-litho by Bolermo is a unique print and testimonial to the genius and extraordinary talent of HR Giger.

Info on HR Giger :

Hans Ruedi Giger (5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as “biomechanical”. Giger later abandoned airbrushes for pastels, markers, and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including album covers, furniture, and tattoos.

Giger’s first success was when H. H. Kunz, co-owner of Switzerland’s first poster publishing company, printed and distributed Giger’s first posters, beginning in 1969.

Giger’s style and thematic execution were influential. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their design work on the film Alien. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985), and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine contributed to his rise to international prominence. Giger was admitted to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. He is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums including Danzig III: How The Gods Kill by Danzig, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Attahk by Magma, Heartwork by Carcass, To Mega Therion by Celtic Frost, Eparistera Daimones and Melana Chasmata by Triptykon, Deborah Harry’s KooKoo, and Frankenchrist, by the Dead Kennedys.

In 1998, Giger acquired the Saint-Germain Castle in Gruyères, Switzerland, which now houses the H.R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.

Giger started with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, he worked predominantly in airbrushes, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. He also worked with pastels, markers, and ink.

Giger’s most distinctive stylistic innovation was that of a representation of human bodies and machines in cold, interconnected relationships, which he described as “biomechanical”. His main influences were painters Dado, Ernst Fuchs, and Salvador Dalí. He was introduced to Dali by painter Robert Venosa. Giger was also influenced by Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski, and by painters Austin Osman Spare and Mati Klarwein and was a personal friend of Timothy Leary.

Giger had a relationship with Swiss actress Li Tobler until she died by suicide in 1975. Tobler’s image appears in many of his paintings. He married Mia Bonzanigo in 1979; they divorced a year and a half later.

Giger lived and worked in Zürich with his second wife, Carmen Maria Scheifele Giger, who is the director of the H.R. Giger Museum.

On 12 May 2014, Giger died in a Zürich hospital after suffering injuries from a fall. In July 2018, the asteroid 109712 Giger was named in his memory.

Additional info: Clair Noto and her sci-fi screenplay ‘The Tourist’.

IS ‘THE TOURIST’ THE ‘GREATEST SCREENPLAY NEVER MADE’?

Begun in 1980, The Tourist tells the story of an alien who calls herself “Grace Ripley” stuck on Earth with a bunch of other extraterrestrials. Grace has morphed into human form and works by day as a high-powered business executive in New York.  By night she hangs out with her fellow aliens at a club called The Corridor where they have beautiful strange interplanetary sex and bemoan their lives exiled on this third rock from the Sun.

Noto’s inspiration for The Tourist came from the fifties sci-fi movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, the story of an alien coming to Earth with an ultimatum. Noto liked the idea of an alien walking among us, as she later explained:

I loved the whole idea of a man who could walk around in a boarding house in Washington, who was from another planet and you didn’t recognize his alienness. The idea of a human being who wasn’t a human being had been in my mind for a long time.

Noto’s script was a grown-up science-fiction story with strong female characters.

Grace Ripley, the determined alien-fighting her private battles on a male-oriented world; Spider O’Toole, the alienated New Wave human; and even the guards of the Corridor, depicted as strong yet sexy women whose sensuality belied not only their true purpose but their underlying strength.

Artist H. R. Giger, the man who created the xenomorph for Alien, was brought in to design the exiled extraterrestrials. Giger produced a series of illustrations. But Noto wasn’t even allowed to see any of Giger’s suggestions for her characters. As the situation became untenable, Noto used a get-out clause in her contract to call a halt to the project.