Franz Gertsch (1930–2022)

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Pop Art – short for 'popular art' – was the new artistic movement of the 1960s. Originating in the United States, it quickly spread across Europe. Franz Gertsch, too, was drawn to this bold new form of artistic expression.

'It was only when I encountered Pop Art in the mid-1960s that I finally found a way of engaging with contemporary artistic developments.'

'That’s when I began working from photographic source material, although at first I used only the outlines. Most of these works were collages cut from coloured paper. What mattered was the design of the outlines. They became increasingly simple, until I was working with only a very small number of forms.'

Gertsch subsequently translated these collages into paintings, as in Alle fünf Rolling Stones (All Five of Rolling Stones), painted in 1968. The source was a photograph published in the French music magazine Salut les copains. The work’s bold colours and simplified forms are characteristic of Pop Art, as is the principle of serial production. Andy Warhol, the best-known representative of Pop Art, made art history with his serial screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s soup cans.

Gertsch applied this serial principle to his Rolling Stones. He created a series of four paintings of the band. While the painting in front of you still depicts all five members, each subsequent work omits one of the musicians. The series culminates in the painting Mick Jagger, displayed to the right.

The inspiration for these paintings was the legendary Rolling Stones concert at Zurich’s Hallenstadion on 14 April 1967. It was the band’s first performance in Switzerland and went down in history for the chair-smashing that erupted during the concert – an event widely regarded as a precursor to the protests of 1968.