Jerrold Burchman

About the Artist: Jerrold Burchman, an American artist, is known for the innovative presentation and Surrealist-inspired technique of his abstract paintings. Jerrold Burchman was born in New York City in 1939. At the age of five, he declared himself to be an artist, and with his parent’s support, he began to study his craft. He started at the exclusive Fine Arts and Music High School in New York, then continued at UCLA, where he would receive both his BA and MFA degrees. A favored student, he received both the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award in painting and the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. During this time, he was asked to participate in a group exhibition at the nationally recognized Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles, which featured such artists as Sam Francis and Francis Bacon. After his graduation, Los Angeles was amid a cultural explosion, with art in high demand. Burchman quickly became one of the most sought-after abstract artists. In 1975 he participated in an exhibition entitled “Fourteen Abstract Painters” which placed him with his peers such as Brice Marden and Robert Ryman. Burchman’s work at this time was very large in scale. He worked with acrylics and Rho plex on paper, which he placed on the floor in the manner of Jackson Pollock, but he exerted much more control in his selection of signs and symbols. He also innovated in a presentation by hanging his paper works directly on the wall without traditional support. It was a unique method that led to his inclusion in an exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris in 1977. Among his peers in this exhibition were Peter Plagens and Tom Wudl. By this time, Burchman was still working on the floor, but his huge paintings were produced by using a squeegee to drag pigment in methodical units across the paper support. Burchman continued to exhibit widely throughout the United States and Europe and found his way into an impressive array of private and public collections, including the Portland Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Denver Museum, Bordeaux Museum in France, and the Museum of Modern Art in Belgrade. Burchman currently resides in Los Angeles, where he continues his prolific work.