Buchmann Galerie — 50 years in Switzerland from 1975 – 2025
Buchmann Galerie in Switzerland was founded in 1975 by Elena Buchmann (d. 2025) together with her husband Felix Buchmann (d. 2008) in St. Gallen, and was located in Basel, opposite the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart from 1983 to 1998. In 1998, it moved to Agra (Lugano) to a specially constructed gallery building and, from 2013 onwards, has also operated an exhibition space in Lugano.
In March 2025, Elena Buchmann concluded the exhibition activity of Buchmann Galerie in Switzerland after 50 years.
André Buchmann, the son of Elena and Felix Buchmann, has founded his gallery under the same name, Buchmann Galerie, in Germany in 1995. The gallery has been located in Berlin since 2005.
Exhibitions and artists
In 50 years of its activity in Switzerland, the gallery has realized over 300 exhibitions and dedicated itself to international contemporary art.
The gallery first attracted international attention with a series of exhibitions in the early 1980ies on the Italian Transavanguardia, the French Figuration Libre and the German Junge Wilde painting movement, and on trends in British sculpture.
Other highlights were the exhibition of large a walk-in room completely covered in beeswax by Wolfgang Laib, the opening show of the gallery in Basel with Mario Merz after a working stay of the artist of several months, organised by the gallery. The gallery also presented the first exhibition of Tony Cragg that focused exclusively on glass sculptures, a material that has become increasingly topical in the art scene today.
Elena and Felix Buchmann worked closely with artists such as Mario Merz, Dieter Roth, Emilio Vedova, Giuseppe Penone, Richard Long, Tony Cragg and Wolfgang Laib, thus providing important inspiration for the contemporary art scene.
The gallery has also devoted important exhibitions to artists like Jonathan Lasker, Jean Charles Blais, Bernd Koberling, Felice Varini, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Hans Krüsi, Franz Eggenschwiler, Giovanni Anselmo, Hans Josephsohn, Alberto Garutti, John Chamberlain, Martin Disler and Lawrence Carroll.
Art Fairs
The gallery has regularly participated in international art fairs such as Art Basel, Fiac Paris, Art Cologne, Arco Madrid, Fiera di Bologna or Art Brussels.
From 1993 and in the following years, Felix Buchmann, together with Pierre Huber (Galerie Art & Public, Geneva) and Gianfranco Verna (Galerie Annemarie Verna, Zurich), formed a small committee for Art Basel, which laid the foundations for the current form of Art Basel. Felix Buchmann also had the idea of organizing a sculpture exhibition at the fair, the predecessor of today's Art Unlimited of Art Basel.