Sandra Koller

1965 bis 2021, Switzerland

Sandra Koller was born into a banking family and grew up in Stäfa on the shore of Lake Zurich. She took up drawing at the age of 18, after leaving school. She is described as a spontaneous, happy and sociable woman. In 1989, Sandra Koller married a painter and lived with him in Zurich until he died eight years later. She then spent three years in India, attempting to recover from this painful loss. Following a motorcycle accident in which she was badly injured, she returned to Switzerland. She found her family and home environment profoundly changed. She then lived in Malta for two years, and in 2003 moved to Arbon in Switzerland, where she lived until her death in 2021. Once again she was involved in a serious accident, resulting in further mobility problems. She also developed polyarthritis, which made her more and more immobile. In the last years of her life she was no longer able to draw, and with the agreement of her mother, Eleonore Koller, she decided to end her life voluntarily with help from the Exit Organisation.

Her work was first exhibited in 1986. Right from the start she preferred working with larger formats and using Neocolor crayons. During her years abroad, however, she concentrated on smaller formats.  Once her travels were over, she returned to larger drawings, with a standard format of 70 x 50 cm, and continued to use Neocolors. Her subject matter changed and became more poetic, visionary and mystically surreal. Her drawings are full of joy and hope. In 2008 she held another exhibition. Further exhibitions followed: in 2015 at the Musée de la Création Franche in Bègles near Bordeaux, and in 2016 at the Kunstverein Frauenfeld.

Sandra Koller’s work can be found in collections such as those of Korine and Max E. Ammann and of Karin and Gerhard Dammann – both in Switzerland.

Selected works