Alfonso Hüppi | Art Store

VAN HAM Art Estate presents "Alfonso Hüppi"

The offering on Alfonso Hüppi presents an exciting overview from the oeuvre of the Swiss sculptor and draftsman. The artist creates unconventional artworks ranging from spontaneous hand drawings to sculptural murals. His work stands for an abstract sensuality and teasing humor. A central theme in his works is the motif of the tree.

Since 2020, VAN HAM Art Estate represents the artistic estate of Alfonso Hüppi. For more information on the VAN HAM Art Estate, please visit the official Homepage.

The conceptual sculptor and draftsman Alfonso Hüppi (*1935) is one of the most important representatives of the post-war avant-garde and postmodernism. Characteristic of the works of the Swiss is a humorous bricolage aesthetic. The colored wooden works of the well-known professor of the Düsseldorf Art Academy (1974-1999) show a self-reflective work on the concept of the image, which in their brittle sensuality represent experiments in form between abstraction and figuration. His works can be found in the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Museum Frieder Burda Baden-Baden and the Kunsthaus Zürich, among others.

In the mid-1960s, Alfonso Hüppi began working on wooden objects, through which he became known. Characteristic of his pallet works is the range and sophistication of color and form. The materials originally used for transporting art change into artful wall objects. The artist uses packaging materials such as pallets, crates and boards made of wood to create colorful sculptures and wall reliefs. Through colored overpaintings or motifs, the artist creates a spatial depth effect. The motif of the tree forms a characteristic feature of the works.

Parallel to the emerging Concept Art and Minimal Art in the 1970s, Alfonso Hüppi focuses on the cube and other geometric forms. Following the principle of "descrambling," "staggering," and "mirroring," he creates monochrome wooden works that are wooden board squares mounted to each other, representing an unfolded cube. The work process is brought to the point here and appears as an overall form.

Alfonso Hüppi's wooden objects of the 1980s vary greatly in size and shape, and small-format painted wooden shingles are created.

For the works from the 1990s onwards, especially the triangles, Alfonso Hüppi now uses other materials in addition to wood, such as handmade iron and Plexiglas edgings. The painted triangles take up the artist's typical head motif.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Alfonso Hüppi produced small-format wooden objects that have their own symbolic language. Faces evoke emotions in a reduced form by means of dice points.

Aspects of the humorous and playful can also be found especially in Alfonso Hüppi's late work from the 2010s. The artist experiments with wooden fragments that allude to the opposition of order and chaos.

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For more information on the artist, please visit Alfonso Hüppi's official homepage:

 Alfonso Hüppi