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How ‘Alien’ creature designer’s works are star of 2 Swiss medieval towns that offer an unlikely mix of idyllic backdrops and morbid art

  • H R Giger was born in the Swiss city of Chur, where his style of blending human physiques and machines developed, possibly influenced by his surroundings
  • Museums, houses and bars here and in Gruyères tell the artist’s story and exhibit unusual works that put him on Alien director Ridley Scott’s radar

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The interior of H R Giger Bar in Gruyères, Switzerland, resembles a rib cage. Gruyères and Chur, the country’s oldest city, have slowly come to terms with the art created by the “Alien” designer. Photo: Peter Neville-Hadley

Chur, capital of the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden, is the oldest city in Switzerland, its well-preserved medieval centre a warren of pastel-painted mansions sitting on the right bank of a still-infant Rhine.

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Conservative, and nearly 50 per cent Catholic, this charming city was reluctant to recognise its most famous son – the painter, sculptor and designer H R Giger, whose fantastical and often morbidly sexualised work was considered to be charmless and likely to give religious authorities the vapours.

Giger was both part of the Oscar-winning design team for Ridley Scott’s sci-fi slasher Alien (1979) and sole creator of that film’s starring creature – one of cinema’s most original and terrifying monsters.

Before Alien, the artist was already known for posters and for album covers such as prog-rock supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery (1973).

Chur, the oldest in city Switzerland, was the birthplace of H R Giger, designer of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” creature and master of dark images of part-human, part-mechanical creatures. Photo: Peter Neville-Hadley
Chur, the oldest in city Switzerland, was the birthplace of H R Giger, designer of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” creature and master of dark images of part-human, part-mechanical creatures. Photo: Peter Neville-Hadley

Necronomicon, a book of his art published in 1977, garnered a cult following with its airbrushed images of part-organic and part-machine creatures called biomechanoids. Scott decided he wanted one of its creatures in 3D.

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And it was the Oscar-winning success of Alien that finally forced Chur to pay attention to Giger.

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