H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist artist who burst into the public consciousness on this side of the Atlantic designing the horrific look of the title creature in “Alien,” died Monday after being hospitalized with injuries from a fall, the Associated Press first reported.
He was 74.
Giger’s nightmarish blend of biological and technological imagery using a palette that seemed to only include blacks, grays and reds was perhaps not surprisingly fueled by his own bad dreams.
The artist kept a journal by his bed, so he could record the imagery from his own nightmares.
“My paintings seem to make the strongest impression on people who are, well, who are crazy,”Giger said in a 1979 interview with Starlog magazine.
Though he was born in the rural Swiss town of Chur and started off in the decidedly straitlaced field of industrial art, he gravitated towards surrealism, influenced by the likes of Salvador Dali.
As word of his controversial art and its themes of sex and death spread beyond Switzerland, Giger was tapped for the album cover of the 1973 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, “Brain Salad Surgery” — widely considered by critics one of the most memorable album covers of all time.
His intricate detailing was also noticed by an up and coming filmmaker Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, who were looking for a creepy vibe for their sci-fi horror flick about an alien stalking a human crew aboard a spaceship.
After Giger won an Academy Award as part of the visual effects team on “Alien,” he continued to dabble in show business, designing sets for “Poltergeist II” (1986( and “Alien III” (1992).
Some of his best work can be seen in the concept art work for director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ambitious “Dune” film, which never made it to the big screen.
Giger, however, found horror behind the scenes working for Hollywood, and he retreated back to Zurich and his art. He famously once called the film industry “a gangster business.”
“People do what they want in the studios, more and more I got depressed about the work I did,” Giger says in a 2011 documentary made for a Swiss design exhibition. “At the end it was so terrible, that they were no more my creations, they were all creations from the executives. … and I didn’t want to give my name for that.”
In 1998, the artist founded the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyeres, Switzerland.
