20 Years a Ghost
It’s been two decades since the last confirmed sighting of ELP I and ELP II, a pair of oil-on-paper paintings by Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger, best known for his Academy Award-winning design work on Alien. These two works, commissioned in 1973 by progressive rock legends Emerson, Lake & Palmer, would go on to define the unforgettable gatefold cover for their album Brain Salad Surgery: a haunting portrait of life, death, machinery, and flesh.
For readers of Heavy Metal, Giger occupies a mythic place in a pantheon of visionary artists. His influence ripples through the magazine’s history, not only via its early connection to Alien (1979), the comic adaptation of which first brought his biomechanical horrors into the magazine's orbit, but also through his unforgettable December 1981 cover and interior feature. Publishing Giger's collaboration with pop icon Debbie Harry, remains one of Heavy Metal’s boldest breaches of format. The mixed-media exploration of beauty, distortion, and celebrity that was hard to forget.
Yet, even within Giger’s vast body of work, ELP I and ELP II hold a unique place. They are transitional works: bridging the gap between the underground and the mainstream. And now, for twenty years, they’ve been ghosts. Vanished. Presumed stolen.
They were last seen in 2005, on the gallery walls of the National Technical Museum in Prague. The retrospective closed. The paintings were packed. The crates were loaded onto a truck bound for Switzerland. But when the shipment arrived at the Giger Museum in Gruyères, ELP I and ELP II were gone.
No break-in. No smashed glass. No obvious trail. Someone took them quietly and efficiently. And you have to wonder: twenty years on, where are they now? Does some lone admirer look at them each night before bed?
We reached out to the HR Giger Museum while writing this article to see if there had been any update to this story, there was not. If you have any credible information about the whereabouts of ELP I or ELP II, the H. R. Giger Museum is still offering a reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. The museum can be contacted through it's official website at hrgigermuseum.com.
20 Years a Ghost
It’s been two decades since the last confirmed sighting of ELP I and ELP II, a pair of oil-on-paper paintings by Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger, best known for his Academy Award-winning design work on Alien. These two works, commissioned in 1973 by progressive rock legends Emerson, Lake & Palmer, would go on to define the unforgettable gatefold cover for their album Brain Salad Surgery: a haunting portrait of life, death, machinery, and flesh.
For readers of Heavy Metal, Giger occupies a mythic place in a pantheon of visionary artists. His influence ripples through the magazine’s history, not only via its early connection to Alien (1979), the comic adaptation of which first brought his biomechanical horrors into the magazine's orbit, but also through his unforgettable December 1981 cover and interior feature. Publishing Giger's collaboration with pop icon Debbie Harry, remains one of Heavy Metal’s boldest breaches of format. The mixed-media exploration of beauty, distortion, and celebrity that was hard to forget.
Yet, even within Giger’s vast body of work, ELP I and ELP II hold a unique place. They are transitional works: bridging the gap between the underground and the mainstream. And now, for twenty years, they’ve been ghosts. Vanished. Presumed stolen.
They were last seen in 2005, on the gallery walls of the National Technical Museum in Prague. The retrospective closed. The paintings were packed. The crates were loaded onto a truck bound for Switzerland. But when the shipment arrived at the Giger Museum in Gruyères, ELP I and ELP II were gone.
No break-in. No smashed glass. No obvious trail. Someone took them quietly and efficiently. And you have to wonder: twenty years on, where are they now? Does some lone admirer look at them each night before bed?
We reached out to the HR Giger Museum while writing this article to see if there had been any update to this story, there was not. If you have any credible information about the whereabouts of ELP I or ELP II, the H. R. Giger Museum is still offering a reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. The museum can be contacted through it's official website at hrgigermuseum.com.
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It’s been two decades since the last confirmed sighting of ELP I and ELP II, a pair of oil-on-paper paintings by Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger, best known for his Academy Award-winning design work on Alien. These two works, commissioned in 1973 by progressive rock legends Emerson, Lake & Palmer, would go on to define the unforgettable gatefold cover for their album Brain Salad Surgery: a haunting portrait of life, death, machinery, and flesh.
For readers of Heavy Metal, Giger occupies a mythic place in a pantheon of visionary artists. His influence ripples through the magazine’s history, not only via its early connection to Alien (1979), the comic adaptation of which first brought his biomechanical horrors into the magazine's orbit, but also through his unforgettable December 1981 cover and interior feature. Publishing Giger's collaboration with pop icon Debbie Harry, remains one of Heavy Metal’s boldest breaches of format. The mixed-media exploration of beauty, distortion, and celebrity that was hard to forget.
Yet, even within Giger’s vast body of work, ELP I and ELP II hold a unique place. They are transitional works: bridging the gap between the underground and the mainstream. And now, for twenty years, they’ve been ghosts. Vanished. Presumed stolen.
They were last seen in 2005, on the gallery walls of the National Technical Museum in Prague. The retrospective closed. The paintings were packed. The crates were loaded onto a truck bound for Switzerland. But when the shipment arrived at the Giger Museum in Gruyères, ELP I and ELP II were gone.
No break-in. No smashed glass. No obvious trail. Someone took them quietly and efficiently. And you have to wonder: twenty years on, where are they now? Does some lone admirer look at them each night before bed?
We reached out to the HR Giger Museum while writing this article to see if there had been any update to this story, there was not. If you have any credible information about the whereabouts of ELP I or ELP II, the H. R. Giger Museum is still offering a reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. The museum can be contacted through it's official website at hrgigermuseum.com.
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