Charles Burchfield

Charles Burchfield is an American painter born in 1893 in Ohio, the United States. Raised by his mother, he graduated from the Institute of Art of Cleveland in 1916. He then moved to New York.

Charles Burchfield is known for his watercolors on industrialization as well as for his representations of landscapes. His work is generally divided in three periods.
The first one extended from 1915 to 1919 and is the most intense period in terms of artistic production. His use of colors approached him to Fauvism. He painted mostly landscapes, which he observed from the window of his student appartment and on which he transposes his own feelings. He was prey of brain meningitis, he channeled his craziness on his art.
The second period started in 1919, and ended around 1943. He limited his work to industrialization and on the loss of sense of the artworks in the modern society. Charles Burchfield then started representing small American cities, which were under the influence of disarray and mostalgia. His pieces are often linked with the work of Edward Hopper.
From 1943 until his death, Charles Burchfield seem to come back to his favorite subject, nature, but with a more brutal style.

Charles Burchfield's work is present in numerous museums in the United States, and has been the object of several exhibitions at the MoMa, as well as at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1966, an art center named after the him opened at the Buffalo State College: The Charles Burchfield Center was renamed The Burchfield Art Center in 1983.