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Jean Willi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean Willi (born October 14, 1945) is a Swiss painter, draftsman and author.[1]

Early career

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Jean Willi completed a six-year training course as a graphic designer in Basel and worked there and in Paris, among other places. As a designer for Olivetti and Kodak. In 1973 he started painting and drawing after a trip to Africa. In 1977 he developed his own drawing technique in which a kind of calligraphy was combined to form structures and networks. Related works were exhibited in a group exhibition in Zürich in 1982 under the title Schreibgestik ('writing gestures') together with artists such as Roman Opałka and Cy Twombly.

Success in the eighties

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He attempted to paint letters based on an assumption of how they could sound like. In 1988 the Swiss art magazine Du published his illustrations for One Hundred Years of Solitude[2] He showed the diversity of his artistic possibilities in the Basel exhibition Pole[3] in 1989 when he tried to combine the various facets of his work and at the same time play them off against each other. Willi designed and illustrated a number of books, published texts in magazines and co-wrote scripts with Martin Suter for the Swiss television series Die Direktorin [de] (The Director).

References

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  1. ^ Passagen. Pro Helvetia. 2004. pp. 20–, 24–. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
  2. ^ "Kultur und Ästhetik im Denken der deutschen Κlassik". Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie. 36 (2). 1988-01-01. doi:10.1524/dzph.1988.36.2.125. ISSN 2192-1482.
  3. ^ Willi, Jean; Schmidt, Aurel (1989), Jean Willi: "Pole": Galerie zem Specht, Basel, 2 March – 25 March 1989 (in German), Editions Galerie Carzaniga & Ueker, OCLC 927615813
  • This article is based on a translation from the German Wikipedia.