Fritz Pümpin
Born in 1901.
Died in 1972.
Fritz Pümpin combined the practice of painting with an attentive knowledge of the Basel region. A landscape and portrait painter as well as a painter of still lifes, he was also interested in archaeology. These activities give his career a distinctive character: the land that nourishes his images is also the land whose ancient traces he sought to understand.
The son of a family of wine merchants, Pümpin initially trained in commerce and worked in his father’s business. At the same time, he attended the School of Applied Arts in Basel and continued his education in museums and exhibitions. His early works bear witness to technical experiments and stylistic explorations that his foundation brought back to light in the exhibition Pümpin emotional.
In the 1930s, he devoted himself to painting, with a studio in Gelterkinden. His work remained figurative and was executed in oil, tempera and pastel. From 1954 onwards, he also produced fresco murals.
An exhibition devoted to him was held at Ebenrain Castle in Sissach in 1961.
The landscapes of Basel-Country constitute an important part of his production, without exhausting his range of subjects. Herbstmarkt in Sissach, an oil on canvas dated 1946–1947 in the Sissach municipal collection, recalls his interest in local life. During the Second World War, he also documented through images events connected with mobilisation and the Basel border region.
His archaeological research, published from 1928 onwards, led him to participate in the cantonal commission responsible for antiquities. This dual attention to the present and the past offers an entry point into his world. Discovering Pümpin invites us to consider his paintings as encounters between a painter and a familiar territory, its inhabitants and its history.
