Lot 8B
Hans Gustav Burkhardt Artist Proof (1973)
Hans Gustav Burkhardt Artist Proof (1973)
Starting Bid: $350
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Hans Gustav Burkhardt (Swiss-born American, 1904-1994) "Abstract with Purple, Red and Blue Circles" linocut, 1973. "Artist Proof" at lower left. Artist's signature and creation date at lower right. A crisp, graphic linocut where Burkhardt distills his abstract language into a compact stage of tension, balance, and color. Against a dense black field, three floating forms - purple, red, and blue - hover like planets or masks, poised above a fractured architecture of white-edged shapes. The composition reads as both playful and severe, its hard angles and torn contours suggesting collision, construction, and the nervous energy of modern life. Executed in 1973, the print captures Burkhardt's gift for making abstraction feel immediate and symbolic. The palette is spare but deliberate: jewel-toned circles set against stark black and white, with sharp accents of yellow and orange that punctuate the center like sparks. Size of print: 10" W x 8.5" H (25.4 cm x 21.6 cm); of paper: 20.5" W x 15" H (52.1 cm x 38.1 cm)
The linocut medium intensifies the image's graphic bite, emphasizing contrast, edge, and silhouette.
The sheet is further distinguished as an Artist Proof, a designation typically reserved for impressions pulled outside the numbered edition, often kept by the artist or gifted within close circles. Most compelling is the personal inscription below: "To Marion and Francis in friendship Thordis & Hans." This dedication confirms the work as a gifted impression, presented by Hans Burkhardt and his wife Thordis to the renowned actor Francis Lederer and his wife Marion. More than a strong example of Burkhardt's printmaking, it is also a document of friendship and cultural proximity - an artwork that moved not only through galleries, but through the intimate circuits of artistic and theatrical life.
About the artist: Hans Gustav Burkhardt was a pioneering abstract expressionist whose life and work were forged in upheaval, exile, and moral urgency. Born in an industrial quarter of Basel, he experienced loss early - abandoned by his father, orphaned by his mother's death, and shaped by institutional life. At twenty, he emigrated to New York, where personal tragedy followed swiftly with the deaths of his father and stepmother. These early ruptures would echo throughout a career devoted to confronting human suffering without flinching.
While working as a cabinetmaker and decorative painter, Burkhardt studied at the Cooper Union School of the Arts from 1925 to 1928, forming lasting friendships with Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning and sharing Gorky's studio for nearly a decade. His paintings of the 1930s stand among the earliest foundations of American abstract expressionism. In 1937, he relocated to Los Angeles, becoming a rare and influential bridge between the artistic developments of New York and the West Coast.
Burkhardt held his first solo exhibition in 1939 and soon emerged as one of the most uncompromising anti-war voices in American art. Responding to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vietnam, and later global conflicts, he developed a powerful visual language of apocalyptic abstraction balanced by moments of lyricism, intimacy, and hope. His work was praised for its direct engagement with political reality, even as it endured censorship during the McCarthy era.
Deeply influenced by Mexico after extended stays beginning in 1950, Burkhardt absorbed its attitudes toward death, ritual, and color, becoming known for what critics described as painting the soul of Mexico. He was admired by figures such as Rufino Tamayo and regarded by contemporaries as a master of abstract memento mori. In later decades, his work expanded to include sculptural elements, protest imagery, and meditations on love, loss, and endurance.
A dedicated educator, Burkhardt taught for many years and retired as professor emeritus from California State University, Northridge. He received the Jimmy Ernst Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992 and established the Hans G. and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation. His final series, Black Rain, created shortly before his death, distilled a lifetime of anguish and resolve into images that mourn humanity while still insisting on hope. Today, Burkhardt is widely regarded as one of the most vital and singular voices of American abstract expressionism - an artist who transformed tragedy into fierce, searching beauty.
Provenance: private collection of important Hollywood family, collected between 1930 and 1980
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Item #
200749
- Condition: Excellent. Tear to bottom edge of paper with some bending and creasing to corners and edges; nose of which affects print. Otherwise, print is in excellent condition with good color and clear imagery. Hand-signed and dated at lower right beneath plate with inscription below.
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