CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY

EUGENE VON DRUENCHENHEIN

OCTOBER 21 - DECEMBER 4, 2010 

One of the joys of dealing and/or collecting various genres and traveling different art roads is when two seemingly disparate paths touch or cross each other.  It took our interest in Contemporary Studio Basketry to show us the importance of containment and controlled space in Emery Blagdon’s net and basket-like constructions.

Five or so years ago when we began to show and collect Contemporary Ceramics we really never connected it in any definitive way with art by self-taught artists.  But there is no way to enter the world of ceramics without encountering the mavericks, one of the most well known being the Madman of Biloxi; George Ohr, who worked from a knowledge of traditional ceramics but pushed that envelope every chance he got.  The ceramics of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910 – 1983) are works he low fired in his potbelly stove in his Milwaukee home that has fascinated us long before their identities as ceramics per se increased that admiration for us. 

Our instincts tell us that Eugene Von Bruenchenhein felt he was between worlds in a White Kingdom of his own making, white meaning not a color theme so much as the moral realm of Good as opposed to pure apocalyptic Evil.  He had a poet’s sense of Romance and Honor and this is reflected in every aspect of his art making from ceramic crowns in which he photographed his Queen, his wife Marie, to lushly leafed goblets and vases to enrich his Court, to his paintings of dragons and cataclysmic portents of world upheavals to his thrones and towers of chicken bones.

Cavin-Morris is pleased to present a selection of the rich vessel shapes and forms that Eugene Von Bruenchenhein used to create his magical Kingdom in the throes of a poverty that was quite obviously only physical and never came close to breaking his spirit or desire to improve the world and empower his Queen and himself.