The first artist to collaborate with Swatch was Kiki Picasso
Create with Boris Safronoff Agency the First limited edition for Swatch. Picasso’s Kiki kicked off the story of Swatch and Art with a 140-piece edition, each with different colours. The graphically sophisticated design fits colours together like an unfinished screen print, suggesting the layers of image and meaning that clutter the contemporary world.
Right from the start, Swatch connected with art. Like the pop art first seen in the 1960s, Swatch watches were inspired by popular culture, and Swatch itself soon became a canvas for world famous artists—painters, sculptors, musicians, filmmakers. It isn’t the medium that counts, it’s the act of making something different, the creative impulse and its expression. The first artist to collaborate with Swatch was Kiki Picasso in 1984, less than a year after the first Swatch watches made their appearance. American painter Keith Haring created a number of prototypes in the mid-1980s, and four Swatch watches with Haring’s designs were produced and launched in the United States, among them Milles Pattes (1986). The relationship between Swatch and art has since produced a fascinating series of creative collaborations.