Swiss artist. He started studying aeronautical mechanics but gave it up after one year. He showed a strong, early interest in painting and music. In 1959, Federle produced his first paintings, small in scale, with crests inspired by the first letters of his name, H. F. In 1964, he was accepted at the Basel School of Applied Arts, one of the most important in the country. There he came into contact with the great names of Modern Art like El Lissitzky, Barnett Newman, Clyford Still, Mark Rothko and Paul Klee. Between 1968 and 1969, he paid regular visits to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, where he developed an increasing interest in post-war American painting. In 1971, he held his first one-man show at the Riehentor Gallery and received a scholarship to go to the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 1973, he exhibited a series of paintings with an abstract tendency at the Pablo Staehli Gallery in Lucerne. In 1979, he moved to New York where he found new stimulus for his artistic production. Between 1983 and 1984, he lived in Zurich and published his second book. In 1985, the Museum fŸr Gegenwartskunst in Basel organised a major exhibition of his work and Federle started a new series of large, vertical paintings in black and white with a strong Chinese influence. Los Angeles, Chicago and New York all presented Federle's work between 1986 and 1988. In 1989, Serge Lemoine organised this artist's first major one-man show, presenting his large paintings at the Musée de Grenoble, in France. He has also had important shows at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris (1995) and the Kunstmuseum in Bonn (1995-96). In 1997, he was invited to represent Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. In 1998, he held an exhibition at the Peter Blum Gallery in New York and, in the same year, he had his first museum exhibition at the Centro Julio Gonzalez in Valencia.
