FILE - In this June 14, 2011 file picture Swiss artist Hans Erni sits in his atelier in Lucerne, Switzerland, Prominent Swiss artist Hans Erni, whose prolific work ranged from tiny postage stamps to enormous frescoes, has died. He was 106. Erni’s daughter, artist Simone Fornara-Erni, announced on her Facebook page that he died Saturday March 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Keystone,Alessandro Della Bella,file)
March 22, 2015 - 6:08 AM
BERLIN - Swiss artist Hans Erni, whose prolific work ranged from tiny postage stamps to enormous frescoes, has died. He was 106.
Erni's daughter, artist Simone Fornara-Erni, announced on her Facebook page that he died Saturday.
Erni produced hundreds of paintings, sculptures, lithographs, engravings, etchings and ceramics. He kept up a punishing work schedule well into old age, completing a series of paintings for the International Olympic Committee in his 80s and painting a fresco at a church in southern France, where he had a vacation home.
Erni's early communist sympathies caused him trouble. Swiss bank notes he designed in the 1940s weren't printed because he was deemed a Marxist. However, the crushing of Hungary's 1956 uprising against communist rule was an ideological turning point for him.
News from © The Associated Press, 2015