HR Giger (1940-2014) is one of the outstanding figures in Swiss art and design history
celebrated around the world for his design of the fantastic creatures and eerie environments
that terrified moviegoers in Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film Alien. Yet very little is
known about his childhood and youth in Giger's native town of Chur. A trove of photographs
drawings by the young boy Hansruedi and early artworks that already reveal the future of HR
Giger's artistic force recently unearthed in the Giger family's former holiday home in the
Grisons now offer intimate insights into his early years until the early 1960s. Richly
illustrated with more than 230 images from that collection HR Giger: The Early Years tells the
story of those two decades until Giger decided to move to Zurich and train as an architect and
designer in 1962 for the first time. Supplemented by brief texts as well as by statements from
his schoolmates friends and others these images form a lively picture of that period: family
episodes the Mickey Mouse adaptations Giger created at the age of ten his growing love of
jazz music photography and weapons the trips around Europe he took together with his friends
and the youth culture of Chur of the 1950s and 1960s that shaped him. The volume will appeal to
any fan of the extraordinary art and the fascinating personality of HR Giger.
