Josef Felix Müller

Swiss artist Josef Felix Müller was first presented at DEWEER gallery in 1985. The exhibitions of 1987, 1990 and 1994 showed various aspects of his sculptural practice. The show Farbe für das Volk in 1999 was a decisive moment in Müllers shift towards painting: especially for DEWEER gallery the artist made a wonderful series of 120 small figurative sculptures, each one of which was given a layer of paint of a different color on the front side of the base. And the show with the 8 paintings from the Alpenbilder series in 2002 was a pure painting show . With our 2009 one-man show Neue Bilder, Eiswasser und Spiegelung, we did present Müller’s most recent paintings.

Müller starts working towards the end of the seventies and makes very large, neo-expressionist paintings about controversial themes such as mutilation, homosexuality, sexuality between human beings and animals, etc. The canvasses provoke a scandal and make him famous in very short time. At the beginning of the eighties, he promptly changes medium and begins to create equally big neo-expressionist sculptures in wood. He makes figurative statues, often painted, preferably in red. It was then that the artist stated that cutting wood is like cutting flesh.

Almost 20 years later, around the turn of the century, Josef Felix Müller’s artistic focus shifts from man to nature. As a logical consequence, he ceases to make sculptures and takes on painting again. From now on, he concentrates on a painterly reconstruction of nature. He regards earth as one big body, which can be inhabited and explored and which is many times bigger than mankind.

In 2000, Müller begins to paint mountains. About the resulting series of paintings, made between 2000 and 2002 and entitled ‘Alpenbilder’, he says:
“In fact I have always drawn, painted and sculpted. During my figurative period, sculpture was the right medium for me. This way of working – to cut figures directly out of the wood with the chainsaw – accorded with the theme of human vulnerability. As for the mountains, it was clear to me that they had to be painted, (…) mountains are gigantic sculptures.”

After the series of Alpenbilder, Müller made series about the forest (Waldstücke, 2003-2006), about sources and ponds (Quelle, 2004-2007), about the roof of foliage in the forest (Lichträume, 2005-2007) and about rivers and brooklets during wintertime (Eiswasser).

For his paintings of mountains and gletschers, Müller chose pictures made by others.
He selected photographs from books, each taken from an airplane. For his later series
he turned to digital photography. During long walks he photographs natural scenes, only a few of which are selected to serve as the basis for a painting. A print on A4 size is enlarged up to 10 times and delicately copied onto the canvas.

Josef Felix Müller was born in 1955 in Eggersriet, Switserland, and lives and works in the Swiss city of Sankt Gallen.
Müller had solo shows in a.o. Neue Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2006), Ausstellungshalle Kraft Basel (2000), Kunstmuseum Chur (1997), Kunsthalle Giessen (1996), Museum zu Allerheiligen Schaffhausen (1995), Kunstverein Frankfurt (1993), Kunsthalle Bielefeld (1991), Museum Moderner Kunst Wien (1987), Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, Neue Galerie Sammlung Ludwig Aachen (both in 1985) and Kunsthaus Zürich (1983).