Hans G. Burkhardt: Artist and patron of the arts

Hans Burkhardt is in love with America, deeply for what it is, and even more profoundly for what it can become. In some ways he almost suppresses his Swiss origins with a speech that still reflects them. He has been a prophet without honor in Switzerland, and though he has maintained artistic friendships there, he thinks American. He is an American painter and in an artistic sense but certainly not politically, an America- Firster. "It is the American people who have given me a good life." Not only has Burkhardt, who is well represented in museums and private collections by purchase, given some of his important works to the University at Northridge and elsewhere, but he has also been a patron of the arts, buying works by fellow artists as well as by his students. It has been said of Burkhardt that more than any other man he has been responsible for bringing the concepts of modern art to the Pacific Slope. I respect that judgment, but I think his contribution to the culture of America's West will be rather that of a man who has been sensitive to all the great periods of art and joined them in the collective memory of his brush.