Swiss artist Hans Erni, whose prolific work ranged from stamps to frescoes, dies at 106

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.