[1][2] Hans Caspar von Matt was born in Stans, the administrative capital of the Nidwalden, a small rural German-speaking canton on the south side of Lake Lucerne.

[2] His father, also called Hans von Matt (1869-1932), was a book dealer and local magistrate who took up politics and became a CVP member of the Swiss parliament.

[4] Von Matt was becoming an assiduous networker, and during his time in Geneva he made contact with Kurt Seligmann and Alberto Giacometti.

[5] She was a prominent participant in the central Switzerland arts scene of the time, and sat as the model for several of Hans von Matt's better known paintings of women.

He was a founder, and between 1944 and 1953 a member of the executive board with the Swiss Luke Society for Promoting Church Art ("Schweizerische Lukasgesellschaft zur Förderung der kirchlichen Kunst").

Later in the 1920s, influenced by the cubist precepts of André Lhote in Paris and by Karl Geiser, von Matt's styles acquired a more individualistic form, clear and compact.

[1][4] Commissions for contemporary religious sculpture provided many opportunities for church statuary and grave memorials across the northern part of Switzerland.