Monster sculptor dies

The artist Bruno Weber, best-known for his monumental concrete sculptures of monsters, has died at the age of 80.

A representative of the Bruno Weber Foundation said he died at home on Monday, surrounded by his family.

Weber’s colourful dragons, snakes, birdmen and unicorns were designed to be a “visionary counterworld” to the “concrete deserts” of highways and factories. They were inspired by eastern mythology and European fables as well as by his own imagination.

They can be seen in the artist’s Sculpture Park on the outskirts of his home town of Dietikon, not far from Zurich.

Weber and his wife lived in a house in the park which they designed themselves and which is also built in fantasy style.

Weber was born and grew up in Dietikon and studied at art school in Zurich. He later continued his art education in Italy, Greece and what was then Czechoslovakia.

He trained as a graphic artist, but switched exclusively to painting for 25 years, in a style he called “fantastic realism”.

He started the sculpture park in the 1960s, at the same time as his house. He was working on the Water Garden in the park until the end of his life. It is due to be inaugurated shortly.