Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) was an American outsider artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work is represented in various museum collections, including: American Folk Art Museum, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Milwaukee Art Museum; New Orleans Museum of Art; Newark Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Von Bruenchenhein worked as a baker, a florist, and a grocer.
His wife Marie served as his muse, becoming the subject, directly or indirectly, of all of his art and writing. A homemade plaque in his kitchen gave him the epithets of "Eugene Von Bruenchenhein—Freelance Artist, Poet and Sculptor, Inovator [sic], Arrow maker and Plant man, Bone artifacts constructor, Photographer and Architect, Philosopher."
He wrote notebooks of poetry, created sculptures out of painted chicken bones, and painted colorful apocalyptic landscapes (started in 1954 in response to the development of the hydrogen bomb) using brushes made of Marie's hair.
He is best known, however, for his photographs, hundreds of portraits of Marie in exotic costumes and settings. He frequently made use of the double exposure to give his photographs an added touch of surrealism; the frequently cited example is the portrait where Marie holds her own head in her hand. The photographs evoke pinup girls of the 1950s, such as this one, from the permanent collection of Intuit in Chicago.
