Artist Database

Born in Somerset East, Carl Büchner studied History of Art at the University of the Witwatersrand and Fine Art at the Witwatersrand Technical College School of Arts and Crafts under Eric Byrd and Maurice van Essche. He qualified as a teacher and started his teaching career at the Pretoria Art Centre with Walter Battiss and Le Roux Smith Le Roux. After teaching at numerous Transvaal schools, he worked as an Art Inspector for the Cape Education Department in Grahamstown, was Principal of the Stellenbosch Art Centre, and lectured at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. He was a Trustee of the South African National Gallery for many years and an art critic for Die Burger and The Cape Times. He participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 1956 and 1960 Quadrennial Exhibitions, the 1982 Cape Town Triennial, and the 1963 São Paulo Biennale. He also won the fifth annual Artists of Fame & Promise competition in 1963. He retired from teaching in 1970 to become a full-time artist, and painted until his death in 2003.

The human figure has featured prominently in Büchner’s paintings throughout his career, with slightly elongated figures nostalgically portrayed through expressionistic distortion. In his early paintings, he frequently used a palette knife to create textured and tonally varied surfaces. In later paintings he created texture through modulated brush strokes, probably influenced by the contemporary Italian school during his tour of Europe in the late 1950s. Büchner’s paintings can be closely associated in style and subject matter with his mentor and colleague Maurice van Essche. Carl Büchner is represented in numerous public collections throughout South Africa.

Image courtesy H. J. Strydom.