BIOGRAPHY
1902 Born in Winterthur. His father was Austrian and his mother Swiss. Attended Elementary and Grammar School at the same times as Max Bill(born 1908).
1920-21 Studied Mathematics at Zurich University, but soon switched to the Dept. of Architecture at the ETH(Federal Polytechnical High-school). In addition he took music and painting lessons.
1922-24 Study tour to Italy.
1925 Diploma in Architecture at the ETH; worked in architect offices in Aarau and Bern. At the same time took painting lessons with the landscape painter W.L.Lehmann.
1929-30 In Seelisberg, where, in total seclusion, he was occupied with landscape studies. Encountered Wilhelm Ostwald’s colour theory which revolutionized his work. Turned to constructivist painting and experimented with form and colour, whose laws he sets down in an“Organ of Colour and Form”.
1934 Study tour to Spain where he was strongly impressed by the Moorish ornaments of the Alhambra. Encouraged by the favourable living conditions he decided to settle on the island of Ibiza. Experimented with light projections.
1936 Forced by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War to return to Switzerland. Worked on his theoretical treatise Die Kunst der reinen Form and got into contact with Grete Ostwald, the daughter of the physicist and colour theoretician Wilhelm Ostwald ; they remained permanently associated until she died.
1938 Encountered Max Bill and his circle, the socalled Zurich School of Concretes, who discovered related endeavours in his works.
1939 Death of his first wife and returned to Ibiza for good. Continued work on his aesthetic geometry and tried it out in new studies of form and colour. Contacts with Switzerland remained :
1942 and 1947 he exhibited with the Allianz , the association of modern Swiss artist, at the Museum of Art in Zurich.
1953 Acquired a farm on Ibiza whose cultivation occupied him almost exclusively for over a decade.
1963 Married his second wife(German). Returned to painting and its theoretical conception. Earlier attempts were tested and developed. Simultaneously he began to work with new techniques of reproduction, above all by way of computer. The international art market became aware of him, due especially to the endeavours of his friend, Carl van der Voort. Exhibitions increased.
1972 Celebrated his seventieth birthday on Ibiza. The first museum exhibition of Hans Hinterreiter followed the year after at the Museun of Art in Winterthur.
1977 On occasion of his 75th birthday, the great itinerant exhibition in various art galleries throughout Europe.
1988 The retrospective exhibition at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
1989 Died in Ibiza.
