User:EdwardNicholas/Peter Kunz-Opfersei

Peter Kunz-Opfersei, Artist, 1944 - 1986

Peter Kunz-Opfersei was born in tjhe Alpine Mountains of Switzerland in 1944, on the farm called Opfersei which has been in his family for generations. He died in New York City on Memorial Day, 1989.

He was a genius, a thinker, an artist and a wonderful friend who inspired those lucky enough to know him to new heights of creativity, courage, love and to see new possibilities in every situation.

After several previous visits, he settled in New York in 1980 and produced a remarkable amount of art in the nine years before his death. He was rarely without a sketch book and when he didn't have one he was making art with whatever was around, from food (he was a great cook) to rubbish to womens' high heel shoes.

For most of the time in New York Peter was in a domestic partnership relationship with Raymond Jacobs, a man of enormous talent in his own right.

In the anthology "The Soul of Popular Culture: Looking at Contemporary Heros, Myths, and Monsters." (Mary Lynn Kittelson, OPen Court, 1998), the writer Judith Savage gives a personal account of Peter's life (pages 193 - 198)

Peter worked in oil, acrylic, watercolor, pen and ink among other media. In New York he was represented by Ingber Gallery. His works are in the permanent collection of the Gugenheim Museum and numerous private collections. An exhibit of his early work was shown at the Kunstmuseum Luzern (Museum of Fine Arts) in Lucerne Switzerland.

Peter's illustrated book "Der Buch der Verwandlungen (The Book of Transformations) (ISBN 10: 3857360860 ISBN 13: 9783857360862) was published in 1989 by  Zürich, Howeg.  Peter and his book were the subject of a portion of the film "Silence = Death", part of a documentary film trilogy by Rosa von Praunheim and Phil Zwickler.