Max Bucherer

Early Bucherer bookplate for Hans Hindermann . Woodcut (1906); Lake Constance landscape near Steckborn , view of the Höri peninsula and the Hegau .

Max Bucherer (born July 8, 1883 in Basel , † January 3, 1974 in Locarno ) was a Swiss painter , graphic artist , book jewelery and bookplate artist and art publicist .

life and work

Max Bucherer was born on July 8, 1883, the eleventh child of a naturalized German merchant family in Basel; his father, Karl Friedrich Bucherer, came from Lahr . Max Bucherer is the brother of Carl F. Bucherer and the father of the harpist Wilhelmine Bucherer . At the suggestion of Rudolf Burkhard, Bucherer began an artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich after graduating from high school . In 1901 he became a pupil at Heinrich Knirr's art school and at the "Künstlerbund Lithographie" founded by Hans Thoma . In 1902 he became a graphic teacher at the Hermann Obrist and Debschitz School in Munich.

In Basel, Bucherer was one of the artist friends of Hermann Hesse and his wife Mia Hesse-Bernoulli . With the Hesses, Bucherer came to Gaienhofen on the Untersee for the first time in 1904 , where he himself lived until 1909. Hesse's friend at the time, Ludwig Finckh , the Munich graphic artist Bruno Goldschmitt and the Basel architect Hans Hindermann also moved to Gaienhofen around 1905 or, in the vicinity of Hesse, to Berlingen and Steckborn on the Swiss side. The then circle of friends around Hermann Hesse, Max Bucherer and Ludwig Finckh also included Otto Blümel , Gustav Meyrink , Othmar Schoeck , Emanuel von Bodman and Franz Karl Ginzkey .

Max Bucherer was designed alongside numerous bookplates and woodcut friend of portraiture using a writer by the Art Nouveau embossed book covers and book decoration to Ludwig Finckhs three 1,906 published books - Rose , The Rose Doctor and Biskra and 1909 for its story Rapunzel and 1911 woodcuts and initials to Travel to Trip trill . Finckh's first house in Gaienhofen also became the motif of a color woodcut that was used as a template for a contemporary art postcard . Between 1905 and 1907 Bucherer was a drawing teacher at the “German State Educational Home for Girls” in Gaienhofen Castle under the direction of Bertha von Petersenn ; a job that Hermann Hesse had found for him. At the same time he worked as a drawing teacher at the boys' boarding school in Glarisegg near Steckborn. At the girls' boarding school in Gaienhofen, Bucherer met his future wife, Else (called Els) Feustel, who was a student there between 1902 and 1907 and whom he married in 1909. In 1907 Hans Hindermann built the Gaienhofen houses for Hesse, Finckh and the local tailor Josef Köpfler; A temporary studio was set up for Max Bucherer in his “Künstlerhaus”; later used by Otto Blümel and Ludwig Renner . In 1909 he moved with his wife to Munich , where he had found work as head of graphics at the Debschitz School and graphics teacher at the municipal trade school. The Bucherer couple had six children by 1924.

This was followed by study visits to Paris at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière . Bucherer made the acquaintance of Paul Klee , from whom he received etchings in exchange for his own woodcuts. In 1911 Bucherer received an order from the Austrian provincial government for a study trip with Robert Michel to the “Reichslande” Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia , about which a book by Michels was published in 1912, which was illustrated with 25 drawings by Bucherer. In 1914 Bucherer's publication Der Originalholzschnitt appeared in Zurich , which was widely distributed and in 1922 a new edition edited and expanded by Bucherer himself.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Max Bucherer was drafted into the Swiss Army and initially served as a fusilier in the guard duty of the Landwehr Detachment on the Gotthard , before he worked as a draftsman for the Austrian war press headquarters in various theaters of war in Tyrol , the Carpathians , Hungary and in 1915 was used in Russian Poland .

Bucherer was released from military service in 1916 and moved with his family from Munich to Zurich , from there to Rüschlikon in 1917 , where they later built their own house and where Max Bucherer was granted honorary citizenship . In 1918 he was appointed as a textile teacher at the Zurich School of Applied Arts and also founded his own textile workshop in Zurich.

After the divorce in 1931, Bucherer moved to Zurich and married Käti Bosshard in 1934. In 1945 he took early retirement and moved with his wife to Ronco sopra Ascona in the canton of Ticino , where he built a house as his own architect and devoted himself intensively to painting in the following years under the pseudonym “MABU”. It emerged u. a. Images that can be scanned by the blind . They were shown at an exhibition in Düsseldorf and received a lot of attention. After 1963 u. a. international exhibitions in Milan, Toronto and Paris. Max Bucherer died on January 3, 1974 at the age of 90 in Locarno.

Publications

Fonts, graphics

• Bookplate. Schulz, Frankfurt a. M. 1906.
• (Going to press and woodcuts): roller. 13 original graphic works by the Association of Swiss Graphic Artists. With a foreword by Paul Ganz, Basel. Delphin-Verlag, Munich 1912.
• Caricatures from the Austro-Hungarian war press headquarters. Private printing (Süddeutsche Verlagsdruckerei), Munich 1915.
• From Galicia and Poland. 14 stone drawings from the eastern theater of war. E. Reinhardt publishing house, Munich 1916.
• Top pictures. Paper cuts. Portrait silhouettes. Edited with the participation of Adolf Spamer, J. Leisching, HT Kroeber and Martin Knapp. Einhorn-Verlag, Dachau near Munich undated (1920).
• Portrait caricatures. 30 drawings by professors at the Zurich high school. Introduction by Paul Schaffner. Private print, Zurich 1933.
• The linocut. An introduction to the nature and technique of linocut. Heintze & Blanckertz, Berlin (1934).
• Big Swiss. Woodcuts , portfolio with 10 woodcuts, hand prints signed and inscribed in pencil. Portraits by Jacob Burckhardt , Gottfried Keller , Leonhard Euler , Jeremias Gotthelf , Guillaume Henri Dufour , Urs Graf , Jacob Bernoulli and Albrecht von Haller, among others . o. O., o. J.
• The original woodcut. An introduction to its nature and technique. Verlag Gebr. Scholl, Zurich 1946.
• MABU . Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1964.

Illustrated books, book decorations

• Anna Croissant-Rust : From our Lord's zoo. Stories of strange people and strange animals , cover design by Max Bucherer. German publishing house, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1906.
• Ludwig Finckh : roses. With an introduction by Otto Julius Bierbaum . Book decoration and binding based on designs by Max Bucherer. German publishing house, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1906.
• Ludwig Finckh: The rose doctor. Book decoration and binding based on designs by Max Bucherer. German publishing house, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1906.
• Ludwig Finckh: Biskra. With 8 pictures. Book decoration and binding based on designs by Max Bucherer. German publishing house, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1906.
• Ludwig Finckh: Rapunzel. Book decoration and binding by Max Bucherer. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1909.
• Ludwig Finckh: The trip to Tripstrill. Langen, Munich 1911. With cover illustration, frontispiece and illustr. Title page (woodcuts) by Max Bucherer. 1913 also published as an illustrated special edition by Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart: 150 copies, as “7. Edition of this book ”. "In this edition, Max Bucherer's pictures and initials are from the artist's original wooden sticks" printed on handmade paper; a few copies of this handwritten numbered “collector's edition” were also bound in leather.
• Ludwig Finckh: Gaienhofen idyll. Memories of Hermann Hesse. With illustrations by Max Bucherer and Hugo Boeschenstein . Knödler Verlag, Reutlingen 1981, ISBN 978-3874211079 .
• Victor Hardung : The Poems . With 1 original woodcut by Max Bucherer. Bachmann-Gruner, Zurich (1920).
• Robert Michel: Trips in the Reichslanden. Pictures and sketches from Bosnia and Hercegovina. With 25 drawings by Max Bucherer. German-Austrian publishing house, Vienna / Leipzig 1912.
• Hermann Hesse (Ed.): Alemannenbuch . With illustrations by Max Bucherer, Gustav Gamper and Adolf Hildenbrand . Cover vignette from Ernst Würtenberger . Seldwyla Publishing House, Bern 1919.

literature

• HT: Max Bucherer . In: Switzerland. Swiss illustrated magazine , volume 12. Verlag der Schweiz, Zurich 1908, p. 322 f. Digitized at: ETH Zurich, e-periodica (PDF).
• Herbert Berner: Visual artists in Gaienhofen. In: Franz Götz (Ed.): Contributions to the history of the community of Gaienhofen and its districts. Hegau History Association (= Hegau Library , Volume 36), Singen 1982, 2.1987.
• Josef Burch / Anna Stiefel: Max Bucherer. Painter, graphic artist, bookplate artist and art journalist. Annual gift of the Swiss Ex Libris Club, Winterthur 2015.
• Andrea Hofmann: Max Bucherer. Short biography and illustrations in: Artists on the Höri. Refuge on Lake Constance in the first half of the twentieth century. Friedrich Bahn Verlag, Konstanz 1989, ISBN 3-7621-8003-2 , p. 156 f.

Web links

• Christof Bucherer: Max Bucherer. Resume. On the author's website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the genealogical compilation on tribalpages.com
2. ↑ See the information on life and work below: Christof Bucherer: Max Bucherer. CV , under: Christof Bucherer, Schönbühl .
3. ↑ See Ludwig Finckh: Gaienhofener Idylle. Memories of Hermann Hesse . With illustrations by Max Bucherer and Hugo Boeschenstein . Knödler Verlag, Reutlingen 1981, ISBN 3-87421-107-X ; here the lid illustration.
4. ↑ See: Ludwig Finckh: Gaienhofener Idylle. Memories of Hermann Hesse . Knödler, Reutlingen 1981, pp. 55 and 89.