Walter Grab (1927-1989) turned to
Surrealism after traveling to Paris in the late 1940s. In 1950, heavily influenced by the visual worlds of Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dali, André Masson and René Magritte, he founded "Phoenix", a group of German and Austrian artists along with Swiss Surrealists Kurt Seligmann, Otto Tschumi and Ernst Maass. In the wake of the international resurgence of Surrealism, which had been presumed dead and consigned to the annals of art history, Grab soon gained recognition in Switzerland (especially Zurich) and Germany. In 1965 Walter Grab and Meret Oppenheim represented Switzerland in the
Surrealismo e arte fantástica show at the 8th São Paulo Biennial.
Grab's pictorial idiom and idiosyncratic style and technique are unmistakable: his constructive geometric elements are interlocked with figurative and narrative elements to form surreal scenes resembling stage sets. To show life in all its starkest contrasts was the Surrealist credo to which Grab, too, clearly subscribed. He became known as an
enfant terrible of the art world, moreover, for his melancholy, irascible and addictive personality.
