(Seewen 1949 - 1996 Geneva)

Januskopf. 1987.

Plaster bindings and plaster with metall on a plate.

Signed and dated under the plinth: disler 1987.

80 x 33 x 18 cm.

Provenance: Directly acquired from the artist by the present owner, since then private collection Berlin.


Born in Seewen, Solothurn Switzerland in 1949, Martin Disler was one of the most important Swiss artists in the 1970s and 1980s. His highly expressive art and his keenly lived experience as an artist afforded him an important cult status during his creative life.

Martin Disler was an autodidact. Unafraid of risking everything, and with complete devotion to his art, in his work he came face to face with strong emotions – love and eroticism, redemption, anger, power, self-abandonment, devotion, and hope. The depiction of his own state of mind and of man’s elemental emotions is a recurring theme in his expressive painting.

Due to repeated infractions, Martin Disler left his Catholic boarding school in Stans and for some time attended the Cantonal school in Solothurn, before he started working as a trainee at a psychiatric clinic. With his first studio in Solothurn he began to work intensively at his painting. Early small exhibitions in Munich, Olten and Solothurn enabled him to gain confidence as an artist, whereupon he applied for various scholarships. He later set up his studio in the Red Factory in Zurich. In 1980 he presented his exhibition “Invasion durch eine falsche Sprache”, at the Basel Kunsthalle, which would enable his breakthrough as an artist. After a bold appearance in 1981 in Stuttgart, Martin Disler became one of the leading figures within Neo-Expressive painting. There followed further important international exhibitions in the 1980s in Cologne and New York, documenta 7 in Kassel, at the Basel Museum of Contemporary Art in 1983, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and in Buenos Aires. In 1985 Martin Disler was to represent Switzerland at the Sao Paolo Biennale, but this was not possible due to transport difficulties. In the 1980s he received the Bremen Art Prize for his work, the Prize for Young Swiss Art from the Zurich Art Society and the Art Prize of the Canton of Solothurn. During his time as an artist, the movements of the “Neue Wilden”, “Transavanguardia” and “Figuration Libre” were active, although Martin Disler did not like to be regarded as one of them.

At the beginning of the 1980s Martin Disler’s works were defined mostly by large format canvases, clearly defined motifs and figures. His colour palette consisted of bold and bright colours. His work was of an extraordinarily impressive dynamism, thanks not only to the scale of the works, but above all thanks to his distinctive painting process. Using the brush, hands and fingers he would shape his figures using the whole of his body. Through the unbridled quality and directness of the representation of feelings such as pain, violence or eroticism, he succeeded in creating a powerful impact. On the other hand, he also worked with earthy or pastel colours, which he applied very thinly over wove paper or canvas, thereby bringing lightness and transparency to the fore. His works, he said, were created in a process of continuous intensification.

Although he never entirely gave up figuration, the painterly quality of the late paintings was more ambitious, and fewer and fewer figurative motifs can be discerned. His sculptural works in bronze, wood, gesso or fabric initially played a secondary role after his painting and printmaking, but from 1993 they took on an increasing significance. Martin Disler stated: “The sculptures (to speak my language to the dead) – bright creatures in the dark night (emissaries of my freedom and fellow inmates of my prison cell) – they are the many dimensions, which come together in order to carry the light on their skin, which emulates the microscopic nature of the soul.” (Sikart)

After a life of excess and unrelenting work, the artist died at the age of just 47 in Zurich.