Trivia

He was born into a poor family with seven brothers and sisters. His father was a mechanic on steamboats plying Lake Lucerne.

After studying architecture and surveying, he pursued studies in art in Paris in the 1920s, and then in Berlin. In the early 1930s, he became an exponent of abstract art in Paris, where he met Picasso, Braque, Arp, Brancusi, Kandinsky, Calder, and Henry Moore.

During his long career he produced murals, tapestries, mosaics, sculptures, and ceramic art, as well as designing stamps, posters and illustrations for books. In 2009, at the age of 100, he completed a 60-metre-long ceramic fresco that decorates the entrance to the United Nations in Geneva.