Heidi Bucher Winterthur, Switzerland, 1926-1993

The artist distinguished herself particularly through her acclaimed legendary Skinnings, which explored architectural space and the body through sculpture. Bucher's work is characterized by a poetic and transformative approach to notions of private spaces and belongings, architectural fragments, feminism, domestication, and the nature of both individuals and collective experiences and memory. Heidi Bucher’s artistic legacy is concurrently a visionary and aesthetic testimonial, as well as a conceptual liberation from an antiquated and patriarchal weltanschauung.

The seminal nature of Heidi Bucher’s works lies in the fastidious attention paid to the memory of objects, drawing on forms that pre-exist in constructions, floors, and staircases. The artist explores these shapes using textiles and latex in a process she called Häutungen [Skinning], or the peeling off of the ‘skin’ of these architectural bodies, as a way to replicate their image but not their body.

At first glance, Bucher’s work may be understood as the negative image of things that surround us. However, the artist does not see the image as static, but as a moving body. The urgency that Bucher proposes in her language suggests this movement. Her works are like the fingerprints of this moving body. She refers to latex as skin; and the materiality of latex is a sensuous and pivotal expression of both a commitment to memory and the act of letting go by keeping only the pure idea of them through her radical practice.

Heidi Bucher (1926-1993) lived in Winterthur.

Her work is included in numerous museums and private collections worldwide including MoMA, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; FRAC Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Marseille; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Musée Jenisch Museum of Modern Art, Vevey; Muzeum Susch, Zernez; Kunsthaus Zug, Zug; Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Lucerne; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur; and Kunsthaus Zürich; Migrosmuseum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich.