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Hans Gustav BurkhardtAmerican Abstract Expressionist California Oil Canvas Painting Still Life 1937circa 1937
circa 1937
About the Item
A good abstract expressionist oil on canvas still life, by the Swiss-American artist Hans Gustav Burkhardt (1901-1994), Los Angeles California, 1937.
This very attractive still life is from the very begining of American Abstract Expressionism, by one of the early exponents of the style. The painting is signed lower left "H. Burkhardt", condition is very good indeed and is ready to grace your wall.
Provenance: Abbey Picture Framing, Hollywood, California, acquired directly from the artist in exchange for framing services, circa 1937
Henry Ruff and Josephine Brownson Ruff, acquired from the above in exchange for rental payments by Abbey Picture Framing, at 7857 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
At Sight: 16.5" Wide x 13.5" High
Burkhardt was born in Basel, Switzerland and moved to New York when he was 20, from 1925 to 1928 he attended the Cooper Union School of the Arts, where he befriended mentor Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning—sharing Gorky's studio from 1928 to 1937.
Burkhardt's paintings of the 1930s are part of the genesis of American abstract expressionism. In 1937 he moved to Los Angeles and represented the most significant bridge between New York and Los Angeles. His experimental investigative approach paralleled, and in many instances anticipated, the development of modern and contemporary art in New York and Europe including the work of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Barnett Newman.
Burkhardt held his first solo exhibition in 1939 at Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles, arranged by Lorser Feitelson, and, in response to the Spanish Civil War, he painted his first anti-war works. From the late 1930s he began to produce apocalyptic anti-war compositions, a theme which became particularly pronounced in an abstract expressionist style after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. He was praised for his “willingness to confront political reality directly in his art,”and in the 1940s he embarked on a body of work that underscored the duality evident throughout his entire oeuvre—cathartic works of power and poignancy contrasted by works of celebration and hope.
In the years following an acclaimed (1945) solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum, Burkhardt continued in his art to respond to WWII, and endured censorship due to the proliferation of McCarthyism, and in the aftermath of Gorky's suicide in 1948, Burkhardt delved in to his grief and celebration of Gorky's life creating several versions of “Burial of Gorky” and a series entitled “Journey into the Unknown.”
Burkhardt first visited Mexico in 1950, and spent the next decade living half of the year in and around Guadalajara. Strongly influenced by Mexican attitudes towards the dead, and by the country's colors, sensuality, and spiritual qualities, Burkhardt “painted the soul of Mexico” with Mexican themes and colors—especially those of burials and ceremonies surrounding death—permeating his abstract work. Art critics of the time considered him a "great Mexican master” alongside Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo admired his work. Overall, in the 1950s Burkhardt held 23 solo exhibitions in Los Angeles and Mexico, and participated in group shows at over thirty museums worldwide.
In the 1960s he produced paintings in protest against the Vietnam War, some of which incorporated the human skulls he had collected from Mexican graveyards. As art historian Donald Kuspit stated, Burkhardt was “a master—indeed the inventor—of the abstract memento mori.” In 1964, for the first time in forty years, Burkhardt returned to Basel, and began making annual summer visits where he became a friend of Mark Tobey—printing linocuts for the artist and collecting his work.
In the 1970s Burkhardt continued his anti-war paintings—incorporating protruding wooden spikes into the canvas—while simultaneously painting abstractions of merging lovers and cityscapes during his summer visits to Basel. His “Small Print” (protesting smoking), “Graffiti,” and “Northridge” series demonstrate the evolution of his symbolism, and his “Desert Storms” series, in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, was discussed by critic Peter Selz at a presentation at the International Congress of Art Critics Conference.
In the last decades of his life, Burkhardt's work had moved from images of imbalance to a study of human tragedy—which he embraced in an attempt to discover beauty and facilitate understanding. Critic Peter Frank called Burkhardt “…one of America’s most vital abstract expressionist painters, someone who took the seed of the movement and cultivated it a rather different way in very different soil,” and historian Eugene Anderson declared Burkhardt “Goya’s spiritual heir.”
Burkhardt taught at numerous colleges and universities and retired as a professor emeritus from California State University, Northridge. In 1992 Burkhardt was honored as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Jimmy Ernst Award.Also in 1992, he established the Hans G. and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation. In 1993, the last year of his career, his final series “Black Rain” channeled pain and hardship, but provided poignant, symbolic beacons of hope and wishes for a better future for humanity. His unique role as an important American painter is affirmed by the constant interest and continuing reassessment afforded his work.
- Creator:Hans Gustav Burkhardt (1904-1994, American)
- Creation Year:circa 1937
- Dimensions:Height: 21 in (53.34 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)Depth: 2.75 in (6.99 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good condition.
- Gallery Location:Portland, OR
- Reference Number:Seller: BB-97551stDibs: LU1366212232902
Hans Gustav Burkhardt
Born in Basel, Switzerland in 1904, Burkhardt emigrated to New York in 1924. Upon his arrival to New York, he became associated with the pioneers of what was to later emerge as the New York School, Arshile Gorky and Willem De Kooning. He shared Gorky's studio between 1928 and 1937. In 1937, arriving in Los Angeles, Burkhardt represented the most direct link to the New York School. In Los Angeles, he independently pursued his Abstract Expressionist style, often anticipating the work of his contemporaries and later artists on the East Coast and in Europe. His first solo exhibition in 1939 at the Stendahl Gallery was at the suggestion of Lorser Feitelson, who was responsible for Burkhardt's inclusion in numerous national exhibitions. As Director of the L.A. Art Association, Feitelson chose Burkhardt to be the first artist afforded a solo show by the Association. Burkhardt's paintings spanned the range of human emotion, and while perhaps having painted the most provocative body of work on the subject of war, spanning the Spanish Civil War through his final works of the 1990s, his ouevre was balanced by works of celebration. While Los Angeles art in the 1960s was seduced by California Light, Hard Edge, Minimalism and Pop Art, Burkhardt, in typical independent manner, created what many now regard as some of the most powerful examples of Abstract Expressionism and is also well-known for his richly drawn pastel abstractions of the figure. Hans Burkhardt's works have in recent years increasingly been exhibited in museum exhibitions nationally and internationally. He continues to attract significant critical attention from some of the leading art historians such as Peter Selz and Donald Kuspit. Burkhardt's works are included in the collections of such major museums as the British Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, Palace of the Legion Honor, Santa Barbara Museum and Los Angeles County Museum. In 1922, Burkhardt was honored in New York by the American Academy of Art for his lifetime achievement. He died in Los Angeles in 1994.
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