Balthasar Burkhard (24 December 1944—16 April 2010) was a Swiss artist who received international recognition for his large-format photographic series of cityscapes, body parts, animals and landscapes.
Read MoreBurkhard came to international attention in 1969 through the exhibition of large-format photographs created together with the Bernese artist Markus Raetz, which included a 1:1 scale photograph of Raetz's study. Burkhard and Raetz were the first artists worldwide to expose photographs directly onto canvases using a self-developed technique.
Much light, just as much shadow, and not a trace of chromatism. Balthasar Burkhard exercises exceptionally economical restraint in his use of technical means. His works manifestly verge on other arts such as painting, sculpture and architecture. Balthasar Burkhard's photographic oeuvre stands out for its hermeticism and poetic depth. Sparingly reduced as these pictures may appear to be at first glance, the attentive viewer will soon find him or herself immersed in the hidden emotional potential associations they release. The theme in his alp pictures, for example, is the convergence of lightness and strength, of delicacy and monumentality. Here, the alps becomes a metaphor for the marriage of heaven and earth.
Balthasar Burkhard's work was the subject of three important retrospective surveys in the Museum Folkwang 2018, Fotomuseum Winterthur/ Fotostiftung Schweiz, 2018 and at the Museo d'arte della Svizzera itlaliana, Lugano, 2018
Text courtesy Buchmann Galerie.
