Roger von Gunten

Roger von Gunten (29 March 1933 – 18 February 2026) was a Swiss-born Mexican artist and sculptor. He was the subject of a 1978 essay by Jomí García Ascot and was part of the Breakaway Generation which emerged after World War II ending the Mexican Muralist era. For over a decade, he was involved in a legal battle over who defines what is art. He participated in over 200 national and international art exhibitions and won the 2014 Fine Art Medal from Mexico.

Life and career Roger von Gunten was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on 29 March 1933. He was a student at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Zurich He held his first solo show in Switzerland in 1956. In 1957, he came to Mexico with a plan to travel on south along the newly opened Pan-American Highway, but he ran out of money and stayed in Mexico.

He was a part of the movement known as Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway Generation) who turned their back on the Mexican muralism of the previous storied group of painters. It was a move away from formulaic social expression toward more personal abstract expression of forms. Von Gunten's artwork is generally divided into three periods. The early period, which lasted through the 1970s was more painterly, impressionistic and playful, transforming the landscape with a blue-green palette of joyful expression. His middle period in the mid-1980s was dark with smudges of color. and his latter works evoke Hindu thought and spirituality.

Von Gunten became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1980. In 1982, he signed a contract with Serapión Fernández Stark, who was to promote von Gunten's work through Impulsora Art-Lat which later became Promotora de Arte Pictórico (Pictorial Art Promoters). In 1986, Art-Lat began to break its promises and unfulfill the terms signed in the contracts, so von Gunten became dissatisfied with the distribution of his work and refused to deliver any more paintings. Stark demanded fulfillment of the contractual terms and a legal battle ensued. On 10 November 1998, a district judge revoked the federal recognition that had accepted that the 19 paintings, known as Espejo (the Mirror), were satisfactory to settle the judgment. Von Gunten, who had left Mexico for a year of study in Indonesia when the paintings were accepted, called for another review on 9 April 1999. In 2001, von Gunten lost the 9th appeal

A retrospective of his works was presented at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1989, containing over 200 of his works. In 1999, Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros published Roger Von Gunten: La Inocente Precision del Caos and in 2004, Silvia Cherem included him in her book Trazos y revelaciones: entrevistas a diez artistas mexicanos. He received the Fine Arts Medal 2014 in a ceremony at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Von Gunten died in Tepoztlán, Morelos, on 18 February 2026, at the age of 92.