Mural “Gesellschaft für Chemische Industrie Basel”
ETH main building

The painting shows the industrial complex of Ciba in Basel. It is part of a series of murals in the wings of the ETH main building’s extension, constructed between 1914 and 1925. Often overlooked today, the murals display Switzerland’s most important industries at the time. Financed by the companies themselves and donated to the ETH, they functioned as a form of advertising. 

Gnehm served as director of Ciba from 1884 to 1894, during its transformation into a stock company from the predecessor, Bindschedler & Busch, where Gnehm had worked as a colorist. It was not without conflicts, when Gnehm left the Ciba directorship in 1894, where he was a high-income earner and directly moved to Sandoz. He was suspected to have purloined Alizarin color fabrication files.¹ A criminal court in Basel dismissed the lawsuit. In effect, this decision of the court contributed to the normalization of such knowledge transfers between the young Basel-based chemical companies.² 

References:
1 Knöpfli, Adrian, “Robert Gnehm, Brückenbauer zwischen Hochschule und Industrie,” Schweizer Pioniere der Wirtschaft und Technik, Bd. 102, Verein für wirtschaftshistorische Studie, Zürich 2014. (p. 46-48).

2 Zeller, Christian: Globalisierungsstrategien – der Weg von Novartis. Berlin 2001.