Swiss Artist Gustave Buchet

Swiss Artist's Art
Swiss Artist Gustave Buchet (1888-1963)

Gustave Buchet (1888-1963) was a Swiss painter from the western French part of Switzerland. He began his artistic training with four years of study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva. From 1910-11 he attended, for four months, the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris before returning to Geneva. Here he founded, along with Maurice Barraud and others, the group Le Falot. On a return visit to Paris in 1916-17, he was influenced by the Futurists and created a series of paintings in novel forms. Increasing hostility, even for his participation in Dadaist performances, led him in 1920 to leave Geneva and to move to Paris.

Buchet evolved in the 1920s towards a flat geometrical painting style, verging on abstraction. Living in Paris during the interwar years, he soon adopted the principles of Purism which Le Corbusier was championing. In painting he developed a personal palette of both forthright and muted colors, and compositions that were remarkably constructed and arranged. He expanded to sculpture and decorative arts, turning out designs for the fashion world and the theater.

While post-cubism was petering out across Europe, Buchet shifted to a moderate abstraction, going figurative. Shortly before his return to Lausanne in 1939, transparency and supple forms prevailed over fragmentation and pictorial planes. Buchet's late work abandoned the dictates of line in favor of a quest for color.

He writes: "In 1951 I judge that my laboratory work, my research, is complete and that I can begin to truly paint. . . My sources are diverse and infinite: I find escape as much in a landscape as in a nude or a simple flower . . ."

Galleries and museums such as Museum Franz Gertsch have featured Gustave Buchet's work. Gustave Buchet's work has been offered at auction selling at prices from $56 USD to $136,550 USD. His record price for a work at auction, $136,550 USD, was for Body in Movement (#7 below), sold at Sotheby's Zurich in 2010.

1
Ruines
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Watercolor on paper, 10" x 15" (w x h), 1946
Christies 2001 auction sold $10,275 USD
(9,400 Swiss francs, CHF)

2
Nude from the Back / Nu de dos
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on board, 15" x 18" (w x h), 1937

3
Marine
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on canvas, 21" 18" (w x h), 1951

4
Naked at the Lake / Nu au bord du lac
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on canvas, 91" x 36" (w x h), 1941

Note the familiar use of orange and blue
by so many artists by Gustave Buchet
in the next two paintings.

Fabulous Painting...

5
Apples and Blue Vase / Pommes et vase bleu
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on canvas, 28" x 36" (w x h), 1932

6
Nude / Nu
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on cardboard, 15" x 21" (w x h), 1945

7
Body in Movement / Corps en mouvement
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on canvas, 29" x 36" (w x h), 1918
This painting is the record price for a work
of his at auction. It was sold at Sotheby's Zurich
in 2010 for $136,550 USD.

8
Nude Redhead from Behind, Arm Raised /
Rousse nue de dos, bras leve
Gustave Buchet (1888-1963), Swiss
Oil on paper on wood, 13" x 18" (w x h), 1951

Read and see more about Gustave Buchet online in English at the: Musee cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, HERE.