Klaudia Schifferle

Works from the 80’s

November 22 2020 – April 5 2021

In the Swiss art scene of the early 1980s it would have been difficult to find someone more in demand than Klaudia Schifferle (b. 1955, lives and works in Zurich). Originally a photographer, she soon moved on to drawings and then painting, often working in a large format with lush enamel paint. Her works mesmerised the art world, combining bright colours and reductionist figuration with a fresh and youthful visual language. In 1982, Schifferle was the youngest female artist ever to be invited to take part in Documenta. Kunsthalle Winterthur hosted her first solo show in 1984.
Along with her success within contemporary art, Klaudia Schifferle from 1977 to 1983, also had a parallel career with Kleenex and LiLiPUT, the first of an emerging group of all-female punk bands in Switzerland. As artist and punk musician, Schifferle was emblematic of the 80's cross-over of music and art also happening in New York and other urban centres, and she became a role model for a young generation of Swiss artists, particularly young women.
An artistic process of experimentation shaped Schifferle's language as both a visual artist and musician for these beginning years. Schifferle's output blurred the boundaries between songwriting, collective performance, painting and drawing, and though she eschewed investigation into politics or socio-political issues, her focus was instead on a radical and uncompromising vision of the personal and the emotional. The selection of works on display at Kunsthalle Winterthur focuses on this period of time in Klaudia Schifferle's life and career.