Paul Bachmann
Born in 1896.
Died in 1971.
Swiss · Swiss interwar figuration · painting, printmaking, illustration and caricature.
Swiss painter, draughtsman, printmaker, illustrator and caricaturist Edwin Paul Bachmann (Frauenfeld, 1896 – Hirzel, 1971) worked under the name Paul Bachmann. The son of painter Jakob Edwin Bachmann and brother of Edwin Karl Bachmann, he belonged to an artistic family whose similar names and signatures require careful identification. He began painting as a largely self-taught artist around 1922 and made a study trip to Italy in 1923.
His painting developed during the 1920s around landscape and the human figure. Family documentation records the influence of Henri Rousseau and lists compositions such as Der Trompeter and Luftreise. Bachmann worked in oil and tempera while also devoting sustained attention to drawing, woodcut and linocut.
He appeared repeatedly in exhibitions at Kunsthaus Zürich during the 1920s and 1930s and took part in the Swiss National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1928.
One work provides a firm museum reference: Herbstlandschaft, c. 1925, oil on canvas, has belonged to Kunsthaus Zürich since 1929 through the collection of Dr H. E.
Mayenfisch and bears inventory number 1968. This institutional record helps distinguish Paul Bachmann securely from his brother Edwin Karl and from their father, both of whom also occur in Zurich artistic archives.
From the 1930s his practice expanded substantially into visual communication. He worked as a commercial graphic artist, illustrator and caricaturist, notably for Die Tat and Nebelspalter. A Paul Bachmann caricature dated 1936 is still reproduced by Nebelspalter in its current historical documentation.
He also designed posters, educational wall charts and several illustrated children’s books, including the Bill und Bob series published in the 1940s.
Living in Hirzel from 1935, Bachmann continued both landscape painting and graphic work. His signatures are useful identifying markers: oil paintings were often inscribed on the reverse «Paul Bachmann HIRZEL», while caricatures may carry the monogram «P.BA». This distinction matters in a family in which his father and his brother Edwin Karl also used the name Edwin and whose works have sometimes been confused.
Paul Bachmann’s auction market is more sparsely documented than his father’s, but individual appearances are established. A work titled Kauft Bücher, attributed to Edwin Paul Bachmann, was offered at Dobiaschofsky in May 2023. Paintings, drawings, prints, posters and illustrations should be compared separately because their function, scale and rarity differ considerably.