Andre Thomkins: Lackskins

Singular and mercurial, the oeuvre of the Swiss artist André Thomkins defies easy art historical categorization. The product of a capacious and supple imagination, it encompasses uncanny drawings, music, sculptures and wordplay, utilizing techniques such as anagrams and palindromes. Influenced by Surrealism and Dada and celebrated as a ‘schwebsel,’ or a floating soul, by friends and collaborators including Daniel Spoerri, Dieter Roth, George Brecht, Richard Hamilton and Karl Gerstner, Thomkins has gained a reputation as an ‘artist’s artist’, and is considered one of the most important Swiss artists of the second half of the twentieth century.