Alfons (Alphons) Schilling

Alfons Schilling (1934-2013) was a Swiss painter regarded as one of the first artists to take an interest in spin art, a technique in which paint is flung onto a rotating surface. His work draws on action painting, whose influence is visible in its gestural energy and its openness to chance and movement, though he developed a distinctive personal voice within those ideas.

During his career he also worked in the United States, where he taught at several universities and art schools. In 1986 he returned to Vienna, serving as visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts until 1990. This Viennese period coincided with his interest in light as an artistic medium, which led him to collaborate with composers such as Beat Furrer, for whom he produced the lighting for the opera Die Blinden in 1989, and Karlheinz Essl, with whom he took part in the Music Protocol project in Graz in 1990.

He is probably best understood as a follower of Viennese Actionism, although the exact nature of that connection is only partly documented. He died in June 2013. His legacy rests mainly on his exploration of painting as action and on his early contribution to spin art.