Fritz Hug was born in Dornach (Solothurn, Switzerland) on March 19, 1921, and spent his childhood on Java (Indonesia) and later in Thalwil (Zurich, Switzerland).
After completing his apprenticeship as a lithographer at the age of sixteen, he concentrated on painting with oils and water-colours.
Five years later an important gallerist in Zurich held the first Hug exhibition, showing land- and city-scapes, people and interiors.
In 1942-43 he travelled to the south of France. He later continued into Italy and North Africa, finally arriving in 1950 at the Mission Hospital of Albert Schweitzer in Lambarene, in Gabon, West Africa. Here he spent a year painting animals, landscapes and people (including Schweitzer) in the tropical wilderness of Africa. Back in Zurich he was invited to hold several exhibitions in various galleries all over Switzerland.
For the 1964 Expo in Lausanne Fritz Hug created an enormous mural of Swiss Fauna.
1967 he exhibited city-scapes in the Tryon Gallery in London, but was devoting most of his time toward painting animals.
In this same year the World Wild Life Fund (WWF) approached him with the request to paint a number of endangered species: a task which required enormous artistic ability as well as zoological knowledge. The first hundred works which were presented in september 1970 in the Helmhaus of Zurich were greeted with wide acclaim. A measure of Hug’s talent was the acquisition of one of his paintings by the Royal family of England.
Other important exhibitions followed: 1973 in the Boston Museum of Science, and 1979 again in the Helmhaus, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Zurich Zoo.
During the next ten years of his life Fritz Hug created masterpieces of animal art which were exhibited all over Switzerland and which enjoyed enormous popular success.
For Switzerland’s 700th birthday in 1991 he began painting Switzerland’s native bird species. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete his ambitious project:
He died after a year of suffering an incurable illness, on january 29th 1989.
Fritz Hug devoted his artistic talent and much of his life to the preservation of animals and their natural environment.