Carl Bucher, a self-taught artist, is associated with Swiss Pop Art through the portion of his work that incorporates elements of 1960s popular culture. In the early 1970s, he and his family set off for North America, where he presented solo exhibitions at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He also developed joint art projects with his wife Heidi Bucher. Together they enjoyed some success on that side of the Atlantic.
Upon returning to Switzerland in 1974, Carl Bucher separated from his wife and settled in Zurich. At the 13th Bienal de São Paulo (1975), he was awarded the international jury’s top prize, while representing Switzerland alongside Urs Lüthi and Rolf Iseli. In New York in 1978, he was in a car accident whose consequences long haunted him. When he resumed his work, the questions he explored became more existential.
He subsequently developed an interest in full-length figures, creating life-sized sculptures of “petrified” characters. There is a famous set of these in front of Geneva’s Musée de la Croix-Rouge, and another in front of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In both cases, he depicts anonymous victims of human rights violations, and calls for tolerance and peace through his work.
Although his work is teeming with tension linked to the conflicts of his time and the repression that was rife throughout the world, his message is above all universal: “Are we not prisoners of our habits, expectations and performance constraints—prisoners of ourselves?”, he once wondered. One could say the austere protagonists of his groups of sculptures are fossilised, as if violently shaped by lava, recalling the history of Pompeii and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which astonished Carl Bucher when he first learned about it at the age of twelve.
Upon returning to Switzerland in 1974, Carl Bucher separated from his wife and settled in Zurich. At the 13th Bienal de São Paulo (1975), he was awarded the international jury’s top prize, while representing Switzerland alongside Urs Lüthi and Rolf Iseli. In New York in 1978, he was in a car accident whose consequences long haunted him. When he resumed his work, the questions he explored became more existential.
He subsequently developed an interest in full-length figures, creating life-sized sculptures of “petrified” characters. There is a famous set of these in front of Geneva’s Musée de la Croix-Rouge, and another in front of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In both cases, he depicts anonymous victims of human rights violations, and calls for tolerance and peace through his work.
Although his work is teeming with tension linked to the conflicts of his time and the repression that was rife throughout the world, his message is above all universal: “Are we not prisoners of our habits, expectations and performance constraints—prisoners of ourselves?”, he once wondered. One could say the austere protagonists of his groups of sculptures are fossilised, as if violently shaped by lava, recalling the history of Pompeii and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which astonished Carl Bucher when he first learned about it at the age of twelve.
