Rudolf Maeglin

50th Anniversary of the death of Rudolf Maeglin: 2 April 2021

Essays by Zora del Buono, Emanuel Christ, Alain Claude Sulzer, Reto Thüring and others

The Basler artist Rudolf Maeglin (1892 – 1971) opted to be a painter, thus acting against the upper middle class tradition of his family. In 1933 he was one of the founder-members of the antifascist Gruppe 33. He has lived in the workers’ quarter of Basel, Klybeck, since 1947, has worked in factories and on building sites, painting what he experienced during the day at night. Through his paintings of building sites he advanced to become a documentarist of the rapid changes in his hometown. The oeuvre he produced between 1930 and 1970 is distinctive and multifaceted, but has so far only rarely been widely accessible

This bi-lingual monograph, with numerous reproductions of works from all stages in his career as well as art historical and literary texts, presents Maeglin’s oeuvre to a wide international audience for the first time, and forms the prelude to further engagement with it.