Hans Krüsi

Flower seller on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse

 
Hans Krüsi (1920-1995) grew up with foster parents and in an orphanage in Speicher (AR). He never really got to know his parents. He suffered during his youth, working as a farmhand in Thurgau and as a gardener’s assistant in the cantons of Zurich, Vaud and Bern. In 1947 he moved to St.Gallen and a year later set up his own business as a flower seller on Zurich’s Bahnhofsstrasse. For over 30 years, he traveled almost daily from eastern Switzerland to Zurich.
 

Painter and universal artist

 
Krüsi began taking photographs in his youth. In 1975/76, at the age of 55, Krüsi began to work as an artist and expanded his roadside sales with postcards, photographs and small picture formats. He soon achieved better sales with these than with flowers. He often worked with self-invented techniques of image, word, sound and object design. The compositions, initially drawn on napkins, cardboard and wrapping paper, show landscapes, animals and people, often arranged in silhouette-like symmetry or serial repetition. Many people still remember Hans Krüsi. Cows are his most popular motif and become the trademark of his artistic work. He was soon celebrated as a “genius from the street”. From the 1980s onwards, his works were exhibited in galleries. In addition, Krüsi, a universal artist, also used his own creative techniques, repeatedly using photocopiers, cameras and tape recorders.
 
Many exhibitions follow. With growing success, Hans Krüsi was able to devote himself entirely to fine art. Krüsi died in 1995 as a well-known and wealthy man. His estate is now looked after by the Kunstmuseum Thurgau. In 1990, the open art museum (then Museum im Lagerhaus) presents his first retrospective. Today, Krüsi is considered one of the most important Swiss representatives of Outsider Art.