For over two decades the Swiss artist Hans Schärer focused on painting the female figure, transforming conventional depictions of women into highly unexpected forms. Beginning in the early 1960s, he alternated between creating a series of over a hundred vibrant Madonnas, each with slim resemblance to the religious Mary, and more than 150 highly fantastic eroticised scenes, edging towards the realm of pornography.

Schärer grew up in Bern in a middle-class family of doctors, and after his parents separated he lived with his older sister and his mother in Burgdorf. From 1945 to 1948 he studied at the École de Commerce in Lausanne, but decided that art was more important to him than business, so after a few months in the south of France he lived in Paris from 1949 to 1956, and in 1951 had his first exhibition at the Aleby Gallery in Stockholm. In 1956 he returned to Switzerland, married the graphic artist Marion Bucher, and moved into the chauffeur’s house of a villa with a large park on the lake in St Niklausen.

In St Niklausen Schärer found the ideal place to work and live with his wife Marion and their four sons. From then on, integrity in the development of his painting, music and literary poetry was more important to him than a rapid career in the public art world. His work did, however, continue to be recognised, and in 1981 he was represented at the Biennale in São Paulo, Brazil, and in 1982 he received the Art Prize of the City of Lucerne. In the same year, the Aargau Art Museum showed its first retrospective of Schärer’s work.

Schärer’s son Gregory has created a wonderfully comprehensive website (in German) about Hans and his work, complete with a gallery and links to exhibition catalogues and press reports, which you can find here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for suggesting the inclusion of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.