Harald Naegeli is a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 artist best known as the "Sprayer of Zurich" after the graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 he sprayed in the late 1970s onto walls and buildings in Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

The "Sprayer of Zürich"

Naegeli has had a classic education as an artist, having studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule

Kunstgewerbeschule

A Kunstgewerbeschule was the old name for an advanced school of applied arts in German-speaking countries. The first such schools were opened in Kassel in 1867 and Berlin and Munich in 1868 with other German towns following. They are now merged into universities....

of Zürich and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

École des Beaux-Arts

École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Naegeli's graffiti appeared beginning in September 1977 on the walls of Zürich. He used black spray-paint to paint wireframe figures on the walls of public and private buildings alike. He painted his graffiti anonymously at night, in places all over the city. The figures provoked a heated controversy in Zürich and indeed in Switzerland in general. Intellectuals and artists recognized the artistic value of Naegeli's works early on, but the general public and the Swiss authorities saw it only as an illegal and malicious defacement of property. Naegeli himself later said that he saw himself as a political artist and his graffiti were a political statement against the increasing anonymity in the city. The authorities issued an arrest warrant

Arrest warrant

An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by and on behalf of the state, which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual.-Canada:Arrest warrants are issued by a judge or justice of the peace under the Criminal Code of Canada....

 for him, but he was apprehended only in June 1979 when he returned to one of his paintings to collect his glasses that he had forgotten there. Until then, he had painted some 900 graffiti in Zürich. He evaded the trial by fleeing to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 to his confidant, journalist and author Hubert Maessen, yet was sentenced in absentia to nine months in jail and a fine of CHF 206,000. His lawyers appealed, but the Supreme Court of Switzerland confirmed the sentence in November 1981. Since Naegeli had left the country, the authorities of Zürich issued an international arrest warrant for him. 72 Swiss artists signed a petition demanding that this arrest warrant be retracted, to no avail.

In Germany, his work was more appreciated as art, and Naegeli remained there for the next few years and became acquainted with Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

, who was a neighbor of Maessen in the city of Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

. Naegeli continued to spray his characteristic wireframe graffiti in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

 and Düsseldorf, and although they were not unanimously welcomed there either they caused much less discussion than they had in Zürich. In Cologne, he produced in 1980/81 a cycle of about 600 graffiti that became known as the Kölner Totentanz

Danse Macabre

Dance of Death, also variously called Danse Macabre , Danza de la Muerte , Dansa de la Mort , Danza Macabra , Dança da Morte , Totentanz , Dodendans , is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's...

; most of these works were removed already the day after their creation by the city cleaning department. The mayor of Osnabrück

Osnabrück

Osnabrück is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, some 80 km NNE of Dortmund, 45 km NE of Münster, and some 100 km due west of Hanover. It lies in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest...

 even invited Naegeli to spray in his city, but Naegeli declined the offer. Adolf Muschg

Adolf Muschg

Adolf Muschg is a Swiss writer and professor of literature. Muschg was a member of the Gruppe Olten.- His life :...

, an eminent Swiss writer and later professor for literature at the ETH

ETH Zurich

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....

 in Zürich and one of the 72 artists who had signed the petition, commented later: "He doesn't work on commission. He does not sell out his rage". On August 27, 1983, Naegeli was arrested at Puttgarden

Puttgarden

Puttgarden is a ferry harbour and a village on the German island of Fehmarn. It lies on an important route between Germany and Denmark known as the Vogelfluglinie which crosses the 18 km strait, the Fehmarnbelt, to Rødby on the island of Lolland....

 on Fehmarn

Fehmarn

Fehmarn is an island and - since 2003 - a town on this island in the Baltic Sea, off the eastern coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and ca. 18 kilometers south of the Danish island of Lolland...

 when he tried to cross over to Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, but was released again on bail

Bail

Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...

. Germany was reluctant to grant the Swiss the extradition, but finally agreed to evict Naegeli. On April 29, 1984, Naegeli turned himself in to the Swiss police at the border crossing in Lörrach

Lörrach

Lörrach is a city in southwest Germany, in the valley of the Wiese, close to the French and the Swiss border. It is the capital of the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg. The biggest industry is the chocolate factory Milka...

 and subsequently served his jail sentence. Once released, he returned to Düsseldorf in Germany.

In Germany

Naegeli largely disappeared from the attention of the public in the late 1980s. He began focussing on drawings on paper and etchings. He calls his new works Partikelzeichnungen; they are composed of thousands of minuscule dots and small lines. This slow process is in stark contrast to his earlier graffiti that, by their very nature, were a very spontaneous means of expression.

Naegeli became a well-respected artist in Germany. In 1997, he produced a graffito for the University of Tübingen

Tübingen

Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

, and in 1998, he was called as a professor at the Thomas-Morus-Academy in Cologne. He has donated his Partikelzeichnungen to the Institute of Art History at the University of Tübingen.

Rehabilitation

Even the authorities of Zürich at long last recognized Naegeli's graffiti as art. The city restored one of the very few of his surviving graffiti in Zürich: Undine was created in 1978 on a building of the University of Zürich

University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....

, located at Schönberggasse 9 (47°22′23.4"N 8°32′56.5"E). When the building was renovated from 1995 to 2004, the graffito was considered "valuable art" by the building department and covered to protect it for the duration of the work. In October 2004, Undine was restored and other graffiti added later were removed.

Further reading

• Maessen, H.: Der Sprayer von Zürich: Kölner Totentanz, Cologne 1982, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. In German. ISBN 3-88375-016-6.
• Naegeli, H.: Mein Revoltieren, meine Spraybomben, mein Aufstand mit Poesie, Benteli Verlag, Bern 1979.
• van Treeck, B.: Das große Graffiti-Lexikon, Berlin (Lexikon-Imprint-Verlag) 2001, ISBN 3-89602-292-X
• — Street Art Berlin, Berlin (Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf) 1999, ISBN 3-89602-191-5
• — Wandzeichnungen, Moers (Edition aragon) 1995, ISBN 3-89535-424-4
• — Graffiti Art #9 Wände, Berlin (Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf) 1998, ISBN 3-89602-161-3
• — Street Art Köln, Moers (Edition aragon) 1996, ISBN 3-89535-434-1

External links

• Two images of Naegeli from 1984, showing him at Lörrach in the company of Beuys when he turned himself in to the Swiss police.
• Harald Naegeli: Summary at graffiti.org, with several images.