Charles Burchfield: Fifty Years as a Painter, ed. Bridget Moore, 2010

Published on the occasion of an eponymous show at the DC Moore Gallery in NYC, this volume contains essays about and by Burchfield (1893-1967), a relatively forgotten American Scene painter, as well as numerous reproductions of paintings, watercolors, and drawings.  Raised in Salem, Ohio, educated at the Cleveland Museum Art School, and working first as a wallpaper designer and then full time artist outside of Buffalo, Burchfield was the first living American artist to have an exhibition at MOMA in 1930 and was the subject of a major retrospective at the Whitney.  A juror for the Guggenheim Fellowship for 17 years, he was for the most part separate from the NYC scene though represented there by two major galleries.  We recently saw a ‘wall’ of Burchfields at a MOMA exhibit entitled, American Painting:  Hopper to O’Keeffe.  Despite spending an hour on line looking for a small oil that Susan and I recalled, I couldn’t locate it in any major museum.  His work is collected at the Burchfield-Penny Center on the grounds of SUNY, Buffalo, near the Albright Knox Museum.