Giger's Alien Monster III, homage to Max Von Moos' "Devil's Kitchen (or Stalingrad)" ?

leading from

Development of Giger's art  

Photograph of HR Giger painting Alien Monster III, as printed in Total Film Summer 2014

Giger's Alien Monster III, 1978

a) Long wondering

For many years since I bought a copy of Giger's Alien back in the late eighties, I have wondered about the painting HR Giger's Alien Monster III. I observed the serpentine vision of Giger's Alien creature coming out of a sacrificial stone , with octopus like suckers running along its grey translucent body with it's tale poking out through a blood drain down the corner. The thing stares at the light coming through the circular window and multitudes of decrepid gnome like lemures reminiscent of the clay sausages that HR Giger was known to have used in making the alien eggs and perhaps the alien nest as well. They are pouring out of the crevices to surround this trapped alien being, they swim through the air like a shoal of seahorses, they are there to hear its every utterance, and in this small world it rules. The worm like Alien is an ancient creature inhabiting the sacrificial chamber waiting waiting for an ageless time to make its escape as it bathes in the ethereal starlight. It might be something of great danger to others should be be released. A giant disconnected hand gives away the idea that this image is abstract are we talking about Cocteau or Picacco? The chamber would have been loosely inspired by the birthing temple interior described in Dan O'Bannon's original Alien script, seen also in Ron Cobb and Chris Foss's illustrations of the scene.


b) Discovery
So I had the idea some years ago that I realise that Alien Monster III must have been inspired by something slightly Picasso-esque as a homage to some sort of an artist,  just as I worked out that Giger's Alien Monster IV was a homage to Jean Delville's Treasures of Satan in the 1990s

HR Giger's Alien Monster III, 1978 along side Max Von Moos' Teufelsküche (auch: Stalingrad), from 1944

c) Realisation after a passing
After HR Giger had finally passed on, I took a look at an article from in Kunst Nachrichten from Feb 1973 where Giger in an interview mentioned the names of some people that inspired him, and so my attention was drawn to Max Von Moos's name and his artwork fit the bill, something almost Picasso-esque, and then suddenly on Friday June 2014 I discovered this painting by Von Moos called Teufelsküche (auch: Stalingrad from 1944, and there are enough interesting similarities .

heads from Giger's Alien Monster III and Max Von Moos'  
Teufelsküche (auch: Stalingrad), from 1944, with similar 
pointed ear like shape

comparison between clay sausage gnome like lemures 
and side pipes from Teufelsküche turned on their side

comparison between other clay sausage lemures and
strange black bent pipe like thing with single red eye

d) Items to see
The painting in question shows a semi Picasso-esque  composition , including large hands, a block as a platform and serpentine or elongated forms stretching across and the lower back part of the person's hat or hood shows up in the form of the exposed area behind the jaw of the alien creature with the piping. 

Max Von Moos' Teufelsküche (auch: Stalingrad), from 1944

Swiss painter, Max Von Moos 1093-1979