Emil Georg Bührle (German pronunciation: [ˈeːmɪl ɡeˈɔʁk ˈbyːʁlə]; 31 August 1890 - 26 November 1956) was a German-born Swiss industrialist, controversial armament manufacturer and art collector.

By the end of World War II, Bührle had become Switzerland's richest man after having been told by the Swiss authorities to not only supply weapons to the Allies but also to Nazi Germany.

He was raised in the Old Christ Catholic faith.In 1909, Bührle completed his Abitur, and studied at University of Freiburg majoring in Art History and Literature before moving to Munich.

In the post-war years, Emil Bührle and the Oerlikon-Bührle company were involved in illegal weapons deals on a large-scale, smuggling arms to Hyderabad, Pakistan and other countries.

Between 1940 and 1944 Emil Georg Bührle's arms dealing increased his fortune from 140,000 to 127,000,000 Swiss Francs (roughly $6 billion in 2015 U.S. dollars), which he used for art-buying sprees in Nazi-occupied Paris, forming the core of his collection.

Bührle continued the tradition of collectors in Germany, Scandinavia, Britain and the US, who—before the First World War and in the inter-war years—centred their interest on French modernism.

An exhibition featuring several works of the collection in 1990 in Washington, D.C., led to protests and discussions in the media due to Bührle's role as a weapons exporter in the Second World War and the sometimes unclear origin of the pictures, some of which were formerly Jewish-owned.

[17] Following the findings of an "Independent Commission of Swiss Second World War Experts", Bührle had to return 13 paintings of French-Jewish origin to their former owners or their second-generation descendants.

[18] In 2021 an extension to the Kunsthaus in Zürich, Switzerland's largest art museum, opened, with almost an entire floor dedicated to paintings and sculptures on 20-year loan from the Bührle Foundation.