Biography

EUGENE VON BRUENCHENHEIN

(1910-1983)

Born  in Marinette, Wisconsin

Worked in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

SELECTED EXHIBITION HISTORY

2014    
Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum

American Folk Art Museum (New York, New York)
May 8-August 17, 2014

 

Raw Vision 25 years of Art Brut

Halle Saint Pierre (Paris, France)
September 18, 2013-August 22, 2014

 

Folk Couture: Fashion and Folk Art

American Folk Art Museum (New York, New York)
January 21-April 23, 2014

 

Uncommon Folk: Traditions in American Art

Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
January 31, 2014-May 4, 2014

      
2013    
Alternative Guide To The Universe

Hayward Gallery (London, England)
June 11 - August 26, 2013

 

55th International Art Exhibition

Venice Biennale, Giardini and at the Arsenale (Venice, Italy)
June 1 - November 24, 2013

 

Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection

Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
March 3 - June 9, 2013

 

Women's Studies

American Folk Art Museum (New York, New York)
January 24 - May 26, 2013

2011 - 12    
 

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: From the Wand of the Genii

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago, Illinois)
September 16, 2011 - January 14, 2012


Inova/Kenilworth, a gallery of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
February 3 - April 7, 2012

      
2010-11    
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein:  Freelance Artist-Poet and Sculptor-Innovator-Arrow maker and Plant man-Bone artifacts constructor-Photographer and Architect-Philosopher

American Folk Art Museum (New York, New York)
November 4, 2010 - October 9, 2011

 

Out Of This World

American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland)
March 2, 2010 - March 2, 2012

2008    
After Nature (Group Exhibition)

New Museum (New York, New York)
July 17 - September 21, 2008

2001

Living in the Backyard of Space, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

1998-99

Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century, sponsored by Museum of

 

American Folk Art, NY. Traveled to: Philadelphia Museum of Art: March 10-May 17, 1998; High Museum of Art: July 14-September 20, 1998; Amon Carter Museum and The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth: October 31, 1998-January 24, 1999; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester: February 20-April 18, 1999; Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University: May 15-August 15, 1999; Museum of American Folk Art: September 19- December 11, 1999

1996

Looking Beyond the Mirror, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

 

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Paintings, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY

 

Lyons Biennale, Lyons, France

1995

 A World of Their Own, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

 

Obsession: Photographs by Eugene VonBruenchenhein, Michael Lord Gallery, Milwaukee, WI

1994

experience the Fantasy, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

 

Marie, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY

1993

Eugene VonBruenchenhein, Fotografien, Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne, Germany

 

Eugene VonBruenchenhein, Photographs, Edward Thorp Gallery, NY

1992

Eugene VonBruenchenhein: Utopic Dreams, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

1991

Dreams, Lies and exaggerations: Photomontage in America, University of Maryland at College Park. Traveled to John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI

1990

Eugene VonBruenchenhein, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

 

Eugene VonBruenchenhein: Paintings and Photographs, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York

 

Outsiders: Artists Outside the Mainstream, Octagon Center for the Arts, Ames, Iowa

 

Visions: expressions Beyond the Mainstream from Chicago Collections, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL

 

Chicago International Art exposition, Chicago, IL

 

Chicago New Art Forms exposition, Chicago, IL

1989

Departures: Photography 1924-1989, Hirschl and Adler Modern, New York, NY

 

Paintings of Utopic Vision, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

1998

Eugene VonBruenchenhein, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

 

Eugene VonBruenchenhein: Obsessive Visionary, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

 

Chicago International Art exposition, Chicago, IL

 

Chicago New Art Forms exhibition, Chicago, IL

1987

Material Obsessions, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

 

Chairs, expressways Children's Museum, Chicago, IL

 

Chairs as Art, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL

 

Chicago International Arts exposition, Chicago, IL

 

Chicago New Art Forms exposition, Chicago, IL

1986

Eugene VonBruenchenhein, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL (solo introduction to exclusive representation)

1984

VonBruenchenhein: A Retrospective, Landmark Gallery, Milwaukee, WI

 

Eugene VonBruenchenhein: Wisconsin Visionary, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI

1983

Remains to be Seen, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI

OUR NIGHT OF LIFE

 

   

Our Night of Life
   In dreams we float
To other worlds
And other shores,
To salvage what we may,
To build and beautify
Our night of life.
 

Eugene Von Bruenchehein,  Freelance Artist, Poet and Sculptor, Inovator [sic], Arrow maker and Plant man, Bone artifacts constructor, Photographer and Architect, Philosopher, never really found contentment in the real world, except in his love for his wife Marie.  His was the world of dreams, ideas, of escaping, traveling to far off undiscovered worlds beyond Earth.  

I journeyed to the edge of Universe
Where stars collide and end in dust
The junk yard of the Universe
Where inky darkness lasts from
millenium to millenium
Far  Far  into the unwanted portion of time. . .
 Born in the year that Halley 's comet passed by our planet, Von Bruenchenhein spent much of his life exploring the unseen and unexplained relationships inherent in living things   human, cosmic, and everything in between.  He sought and provided answers to the largest of questions.   Why is there no wall beyond the fringe of Universe?  Because something always lies beyond a wall, And because no Universe can be contained.  Our Night of Life celebrates this extraordinary vision, through which nature is infinitely fluid, continually revealing new aspects of itself.

It is now twenty-four years since Eugene Von Bruenchenhein 's works came into public light, and since that time our examination of his work still has not had the time to fully comprehend the many facets of his artistic vision, within the many mediums in which he worked.  The works themselves are journeys into their meanings, but the artist 's writings   less well know than the paintings, sculptures, and photos  add yet another dimension to his world.  Von Bruenchenhein formulated elaborate Bruenchenesian theories, postulating on the complexity of nature and our ability to know it.  In one selection he suggests that only one of natures planes is visible through a scientific lens:

 

                        We consider ourselves so smart and yet after the
                        great length of time man has lived on Earth he has just
                        scratched the surface of knowledge. . . As far as science goes
                        we have only looked in the mirror, not [at] what is concealed
                        behind. . .
 

Von Bruenchenhein spent hours looking at drops of water through a microscope, and was equally concerned with a macrocosmic order, evident in musings and paintings about the worlds beyond ours.  He made exceptionally convincing paintings of  Lines of Force Contained and Lines of Force Released, pictorializing what science could only express in numeric formulae.  Now, one only needs to pick up a New York Times daily newspaper in which a recent photograph by the Hubbell Telescope is featured revealing some amazing new cosmic cataclysm or phenomena to convince us that, indeed, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein had already traveled there. 

 In that vein of awe and respect, the Carl Hammer Gallery re-visits the art work by this amazing personality in hopes that we may thus honor him and his unique vision.  Confronted once again with his limitless ability to interpret organic potentiality  in paintings and photographs, and sculptures of clay, bone, and concrete, Von Bruenchenhein 's works remind us that the mirror has another dimension.  And thanks to his remarkably expansive mind, we too can marvel as we travel with him in journeys to the edge of the universe.