The Mystery of Artist Paul Dubosclard

A little research suggested an interesting story and that story started to fill out like a Hollywood screenplay. Who was this French immigrant, this talented mechanical engineer who, shot and wounded in World War I, spent years in a German prisoner-of-war camp teaching art to prisoners? How did that man become the inventor of aircraft manufacturing equipment that helped fabricate all of the fighter wings produced by the U.S. during World War II? How does a man like that, a wealthy and married genius, father a child with his paramour, a woman less than half his age, retire with his lover and child to a bucolic artist’s life in Topanga, and then produce a popular line of handmade silk-screen postcards marketed to the tourist trade?

Into this Mid-Century-Modern mystery, mix in eight patents, a contentious divorce from his prior Russian wife who also happens to exchange letters with renowned scientist Linus Pauling, and one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world, and we have a compelling story. Then consider that in addition to postcards, he produced oil paintings, posters, sculptures, watercolors, drawings, marionettes, and masks... and... that he and his work are, for the most part undocumented and undiscovered, and this becomes a fabulous tale.


Please contact me if you have Paul Dubosclard artwork or can help me learn more, and join me via Zoom on May 18, 7:30 p.m., at topangahistoricalsociety.org.