Gallery Artists

Not Vital

Portrait

Not Vital is a Swiss artist who changes genre-spanning between the fields of graphics, painting, sculpture and architecture. Not Vital was born in 1948 in Sent in the Lower Engadine. This region, so heavily dependent on nature, with its harsh climate and picturesque landscape, influenced his art as much as the customs of his homeland.

But his home is only one point on the residence list of Not Vital. He still lives in Sent today, but also in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro. The Swiss artist is a modern nomad. The artist likes to say that his true studio is in his head. Vital caused a sensation in his native Lower Engadine when he bought Tarasp Castle a year and a half ago. He acquired the Lower Engadine landmark, visible from afar and standing on a hill, to turn the castle into a place of encounter and cultural significance. His vision is to develop the complex into a cultural attraction with contemporary art and a sculpture park.

From 1968 to 1969, he studied at the Centre universitaire expérimental de Vincennes in Paris. In the 1980s he created his first three-dimensional works. He resided in New York City, where he lived for a long time in the 1970s and made acquaintances with other artists such as Willem de Kooning, Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 1993, Not Vital also became a US citizen. In addition to a Lucca residence in Tuscany, the artist is often in Agadez in Niger. There he built the step house "Mekafoni" and a step pyramid "Makantara", which serves as a school for the children of the region.

Not Vital produces paintings, drawings, graphics and photographic works, but the majority of his works are sculptures, installations and interventions, preferably in natural materials such as leather, wood, stone, plaster, bronze, iron, silver, gold. The centre of his work is nature in man, the cycle of life, the eternal cycle of creation and decay. For this he uses a simple, very effective language.

Not Vital has exhibited at the Kunsthalle Wien, the Venice Biennale, the Kunstmuseum Luzern, the Museum of Modern Art in Hong Kong, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and the Musée Rath in Geneva. His works of art can be found in the collections of the Museum für Moderne in Salzburg and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Works