Dare

Dare, born Siegfried von Koeding (15 September 19686 March 2010) was a Swiss graffiti artist and curator. Life and Work Dare was born in Basel, Switzerland, to Swiss author Yvette Amman and the German Rolf Kurt von Koeding. He began writing in 1986. Using the pseudonym Dare he started his art career in 1990, making easel paintings. After his first contract for the photographer Onorio Mansutti and a large wall installation for the district of Münchenstein (1990), works such as a stage design for the Bejart Ballet in Lausanne (1992) and painting the theatre tram for Migros-North-West Switzerland (1995) followed, with his first international press reports accompanied by television appearances and reports on Swiss television. This was followed by commissions for the design of facades, walls and shops in Los Angeles, New York City, and Hamburg, and live-paintings with other artists in Paris, Barcelona, Zagreb and Naestved (DK). At the graffiti exhibition "Concrete or Wallpapers" 2001 in the Swiss embassy in London, Dare met Banksy, who invited him to the exhibition "Urban Discipline" in Hamburg. The industrialist and photographer Gunter Sachs commissioned a large interior work of more than 200 square metres in his apartment in Schloss Velden at lake Wörthersee. Gunter Sachs photographed it for Architectural Digest. At the International Watch and Jewelry Exhibition Baselworld 2007, Pierre DeRoche presented a limited edition of 11 watches with faces by Dare with a "Spray-Happening" in the presence of the artist. The Fine Arts Museum in Leipzig showed some of Dare's pictures in the exhibition "Art is Feminine". In SFR1 on 15 April 2009 Sigi von Koeding told the Swiss TV talk show host Kurt Aeschbacher about his career stretching from illegal writer to internationally recognised artist. Dare died from a brain tumour less than a year later, on 6 March 2010, and was buried in the graveyard Friedhof am Hörnli in Basel.