Gottlieb Speiser

b. 25 June 1875 in Wintersingen, d. 25 Feb. 1963 in Basel

In 1939 Gottlieb Speiser began to paint at the age of sixty-three. He created most of his pictures within a span of ten years. During this time Speiser was also discovered by art dealers, and exhibitions followed at the Kunsthalle Basel, among other venues. In total he produced some two hundred works painted on cardboard, although not many have survived. Speiser trained as a passementier, worked as a farmhand and later as a turner, a laborer at a freight station, a milkman, and – as a devoted follower of the herbalist priest Johann Künzle – a seller of medicinal herbs, which he carried in a handcart. He lived a humble and secluded life. The themes of his pictures mostly come from his own environment, and occasionally he was inspired by illustrations. Josef John calls him an ‘old master’ of Naive Art.