Hans Burkhardt

Life and work

In 1924 he emigrated from Basel, Switzerland to New York. He shared Arshile Gorky's studio from 1929 to 1936. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1937, Burkhardt represented the most significant bridge between New York and Los Angeles in that his paintings of the 1930s are part of the genesis of American abstract expressionism. He brought with him many of the nascent ideas of abstract and abstract expressionist painting that had been swirling among New York's artists, foremost among them, Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning. Working independently in Los Angeles, Burkhardt's experimental investigative approach allowed him to parallel, and in many instances anticipate, the development of modern and contemporary art in New York and Europe.

Burkhardt's ability to evoke compelling works of human empathy has led several of today's preeminent art historians and critics to regard many of his paintings to be among the major works of our time. for example, that the art he created in response to war – beginning with the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s and continuing through World War II, Vietnam and Desert Storm – represents a body of work unprecedented in the history of art. In his drawings, primarily through the use of the figure, has reflected the same richness of expressionism and symbolism for which he is known in his paintings.

Hans Burkhardt retired as a professor emeritus from California State University, Northridge after teaching there for ten years. Hans was a friend of the American Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Tobey, who resided in Basel, Switzerland. Hans would often visit with Tobey in Basel.

His unique role as an important American painter is affirmed by the constant interest and continuing reassessment afforded his work. 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 1974, Hans Burkhardt said:

Stuart Davis used to come there and Willem de Kooning. He was very quiet. He was a house painter; I was a furniture finisher, but Arshile Gorky always had faith in Willem de Kooning and me. He said, "These two people I think are going to make it."

From the 1994 obituary on Hans Burkhardt in The Los Angeles Times:

Described by Times art critic William Wilson "a classic American-immigrant success story," Burkhardt spent his boyhood hungry and cold in a Basel city orphanage.

Selected Major Collections