Original HANS BURKHARDT ABSTRACT Print # 20/30

This auction is for a fantastic and original, artist signed, color linocut by internationally acclaimed Abstract Expressionist artist HANS BURKHARDT (Swiss / American / Califormia: 1904-1994) and dated 1972. This extraordinary print (color linocut) of an (untitled) abstract figure measures 10 3/4" x 7 3/8" (image/site size); cream wove paper is approximately 10" x 13" and wood framed picture is 17" long x 21" wide. Print is hand signed by the artist and dated 1972 on  front, lower, right hand side of print (number of this limited edition print is 20/30 and it marked as such on left hand side of print). It is in excellent condition, it has been conserved and re-framed by a professional art conservator (print has been washed for long term stability and framed using the best archival materials (japon paper and corrugated backing, among others). Frame is an ebonized wood period frame that shows very light / minor wear commensurate with age. Authenticity is GUARANTEED.

About the artist: HANS BURKHARDT, born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1904. Burkhardt emigrated to New York when he was twenty years old. He began his studies at Cooper Union and after one year, in 1928 left to attend the new Grand Central School of Art, studying under, and eventually sharing a Greenwich Village studio with, Arshile Gorky who as Burkhardt recalled, stated "'Hans, out of all the young artists I have faith in just two'. That was deKooning and myself". In 1937, Burkhardt moved to Los Angeles where he came into contact with the surrealists, including Man Ray, Knud Merrild and Eugene Berman. His distance from the NY art scene, coupled with the less doctrinaire atmosphere of the West Coast allowed Burkhardt to pursue a varied and experimental career. War and man's inhumanity to man remained a simple concern of Burkhardt's paintings for over 40 years. Begining with his 1940's paintings on the Spanish civil war on through WWII, Korea and Vietnam. His collage paintings from the late 1960's to 80's feature embedded sculls and are an eloquent plea for social and political reform. In 1992, two years before his death, Burkhardt was honored for his lifetime of achievements in art by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in NY. As a teacher at the University of Southern California, LA he influenced scores of younger California artists. Burkhardt's work is held in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the British Museum of London, The Corchoran Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in NY, The Kunstmuseum in Basel, The LACMA and the Museum Of Contemporary Art in LA, The Oakland Museum Of California and The Portland Museum of Art in Oregon, among others. His work achieved great success nationally and internationally during his life. His paintings and works on paper prefigured the rise of abstract expressionism in America; being an early porponent of European modernism, specifically cubism, in southern California artistic circles. Recognized for its profound and deeply felt humanism, his art, unlike the paintings of his East Coast contemporaries (William De Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Arshile Gorky, which dealt primarily with formal concerns, does not shy away from political statements. This position is strongly evinced in the seris of antiwar paintings for which he is best known today. Like Arshile Gorky, the Armenian emigre modernist painter, Burkhardt worked  out of the Cubist tradition. His synthesis of cubism and a nascent abstract expressionist approach is highly evident in his figure drawings, which expand frieze-like to cover the entire picture plane and which emphasize both  the angle, geometry and lithe sinuousity of the human form. Today, these works on paper done on charcoal or pastel on paper are prized by curators and collectors for their intensity and dynamism. 

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