Hans R. Schiess

Hans Rudolf Schiess was the fourth of seven children of Swiss factory owners Victor Alfred Schiess and Clara Imhoff. He grew up in Atzenbach and later in Riehen. The painter Ernesto Schiess was his uncle, and Traugott Schiess, also a painter, was his great-uncle.

In 1925, Schiess worked with Otto Staiger in Besazio, Ticino. He also visited Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos for a few days. He spent another six months in Spain. With the help of Albert Müller, he spent June to September 1927 with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner again, learning etching and lithography. In 1928, he went to Berlin and took a study trip to Sicily and Italy. From the fall of 1929, Schiess studied at the Bauhaus Dessau as a paying student for ten months, receiving significant inspiration from Paul Klee and especially Wassily Kandinsky. From 1929 to 1930, he created his first works in glass.

Schiess co-founded the Abstraction-Création artist group and helped Jean Hélion publish the first issue of the Abstraction-Création almanac, Art non-figuratif, in 1932. That same year, he exhibited his works alongside Hans Arp, Kurt Seligmann, and Serge Brignoni at the Kunsthalle Basel.

From 1937, he lived in Zurich, joined the artist group "alliance," and served on its board. He also wrote film reviews for the magazine "Weltwoche" and worked for the film distributor "Central," for which he drew the logo and made an animated film. From 1938 to 1940, Schiess managed the "Blau/Weiss" studio cinema in Lucerne.