Peter Fischli / David Weiss

Born in Zurich in 1952, Peter Fischli grew up in artistic circles influenced by the Bauhaus aesthetics. In 1975, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Urbino, and subsequently at the Academy of Arts in Bologna. David Weiss, six years his senior, was born in Zurich in 1946. He attended the Zurich School of Art and Design until 1964 and then studied sculpture at the Basel School of Art and Design. Fischli and Weiss met in 1979 and formed the artist duo Fischli/Weiss until David Weiss’s death in 2012.

They are rated among the world’s top contemporary artists. In over 25 years of activity, the duo exhibited in some of the most important institutions and museums worldwide and had major retrospectives in the US in 1996 and at the Tate Modern, London, in 2006. The duo represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and were awarded the prestigious Golden Lion in 2003 for their installation Questions. In 2016, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York organized a major retrospective of their work : How to Work Better.