Image: Graphische Sammlung der ETH, Zurich
A September 2026 blog post examines Hugo Suter’s two-part work ‘Tangenten’ from 1982, which is on view in the exhibition ‘Hugo Suter. Fliessen und Spriessen. Das druckgrafische Schaffen’. The post was authored by Tim Oechslin of the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich and is dated 21 September 2026. It presents ‘Tangenten’ as a work combining screenprinting and intaglio through a process Suter developed himself for the piece.
The discussion addresses how the work was made, its links to bicycle races, and the question of whether its unusual combination of printing plates and a bicycle stand can still be understood as printmaking. In the exhibition, screenprinted metal plates are displayed on an ordinary bicycle stand made of galvanized steel, occupying the place where advertising panels would normally appear.
Suter, who trained as an intaglio retoucher, adapted established printmaking techniques for his own purposes in ways that often pushed printmaking vocabulary to its limits. Printmaking is a major focus of the oeuvre of the Swiss artist Hugo Suter, who lived from 1943 to 2013.
Alongside printmaking sheets, the exhibition includes photographs, hand-drawn works and three-dimensional objects. The artist’s printmaking was scientifically investigated and catalogued in a research project launched by the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich together with the Hugo und Mariann Suter Stiftung, and made accessible in a digitally published catalogue raisonné.
