André Thomkins

André Thomkins (11 August 1930 – 9 November 1985) was a Swiss painter and graphic artist influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. He became known for small-format drawings and watercolours, experimental Lackskins, and wordplay using anagrams and palindromes. He taught painting and graphic arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1971 to 1973 and represented Switzerland at the São Paulo Biennial in 1979.

Biography André Thomkins was born on 11 August 1930 in Lucerne. He attended the Lucerne School of Applied Arts from 1947 to 1949, where he studied under Max von Moos. During this period, he completed an internship as a graphic designer with Unilever in Schiedam, the Netherlands. He experienced serious heart problems later in the decade and died of heart failure in Berlin on 9 November 1985.

In the 1950s, he developed the Lackskin technique from a method used in bookbinding. The resulting images included landscapes, figures and forms recalling microscopic and cosmic worlds.

Thomkins was particularly associated with small-format, intricately worked drawings and watercolours. He gained particular recognition for his drawings during the 1970s, as drawing became increasingly established as an autonomous artistic medium. Language also formed part of Thomkins’s practice. He produced anagrams, palindromes, homophones and associative titles by breaking apart and recombining verbal material.

His object works included the Knopfei ("button egg"), first created in 1957 by attaching a white button to an eggshell. He revisited the object in later versions and developed further works from the same idea. The original no longer survives, while four subsequent versions are known.

Thomkins’s works are held in collections including the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Kunstmuseum Basel, Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Kunsthaus Zürich and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.

Exhibitions Thomkins’s first major solo exhibition was held at Kunstmuseum Basel in 1971. In 1979, he represented Switzerland at the São Paulo Biennial. His work was the subject of a retrospective at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and Kunstmuseum Lucerne in 1989–1990.