Honegger Gottfried

Gottfried Honegger was born in Zurich in 1917 and spent his early childhood at his grandparents' house in Sent in the Engadin. From 1932 to 1933, he attended the School of Applied Arts in Zurich. From 1933 to 1936, he trained as a window dresser. In 1938, he founded a studio for graphic design, decoration and photography together with the artist and graphic designer Warja Lavater, who would later become his wife. Honegger worked as a designer of signets, posters, official graphics and book illustrations. During a stay in New York from 1958 to 1960 he made acquaintances in leading avant-garde circles, including Al Held, Sam Francis and Mark Rothko. After his return from the USA, Gottfried Honegger lived and worked as a freelance artist in Zurich and Paris.

In his work, Honegger combines the rational principle of constructive art, such as logic and systematics, with the non-calculable components of empathy and spontaneity as well as chance methodology. The main themes of his work are the synthesis of opposites, the investigation of colour (predominantly within the monochrome), the figure and its fragments (circle and square) as well as the formulation of volume and space.