Franz Bucher (born 15 January 1940 in Sarnen, Obwalden, Switzerland) is a Swiss visual artist and art teacher. He is known for his paintings, drawings, woodcuts, etchings, reliefs, murals, and stained-glass works.
Early Life and Education
Bucher was born in Sarnen, the son of decorative painter Joseph Bucher. After attending schools in Sarnen and St. Michael's College in Zug, he trained as a decorative painter from 1957 to 1962, working in Lucerne, Basel, and Zürich. From 1963 to 1967, he studied at the Arts and Crafts School in Basel and the Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts (KGSL), where one of his teachers was the painter and graphic artist Godi Hirschi. In 1965 and 1966, he undertook study trips to Greece, Istanbul, Spain, and Morocco. During this period, influenced by Cubism, his work moved toward abstraction.
Career
In 1974, Bucher was appointed as a teacher of visual arts and subject didactics at the St. Michael Zug seminary and at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where he taught until 2003.
Artistic Work
Bucher's oeuvre spans multiple media. In 1978, he created a ten-meter-wide, nearly three-meter-high tactile artwork ("Tastbild") made of slate, sand, wood, and textile materials depicting a mountain landscape, commissioned for the Horw home for the blind. After a cancer diagnosis around 1980, he returned to the human figure, with black playing a decisive role. His series Statio I to XV (1982/83) depicts the human Stations of the Cross in expressionistic oil paintings on cotton; parts of this series are held by the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur. Following his recovery, he increasingly reintroduced color into his work.
A 1985 retrospective at the Bündner Kunstmuseum was followed by a traveling exhibition through Hungary (1989–1990) in the art museums of Esztergom, Tata, and Budapest, supported by the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia. His long-standing engagement with atmospheric light led to works in colored glass and to studies of the northern lights, which he experienced on trips to Norway and Iceland in 1998 and 2004.
His works are held in numerous private and public collections, churches, and museums.
Memberships
- Member of XYLON, the international association of woodcut artists (since 1976)
- Member of the Association of Zug Artists (1971–1989)
- Member of the Kornschütte and Art Prize Commission of the City of Lucerne (1986–1992)
- Member of the GSBM Guild of Swiss Mountain Painters (since 1990)
- Member of the Art Commission of the Hirslanden St. Anna Clinic in Lucerne (1995–2010)
- Member of the Swiss artists' group verarte.ch (2005–2018)
Selected Awards
- 1964/65: Scholarships from the Canton of Obwalden
- 1972/74/75: Swiss Federal Art Scholarships (Swiss Art Awards)
- 1975: 1st Prize, Canton Schwyz: "Swiss Artists View the Canton of Schwyz"
- 1988: Premio, Milano Capitale dell'Arte – Artist of the Year
- 1992: Horw Culture Prize
- 1996: Obwalden Culture Prize
Note: The name "Franz Bucher" may also refer to other individuals, including Franz Bucher (born 1928), a German-born sculptor and woodcarver, and Franz Josef Bucher (1834–1906), a Swiss hotel and railway magnate.
