Oil on canvas

Modern contemporary landscape painting by German-born artist Wulf Barsch. The work features a tropical beach landscape scene with mathematical, geometric markings overlayed in the center. Signed and dated in front lower right corner and titled in front lower left corner. Currently hung in a natural wood floating frame.

Wulf Eric Barsch was born in Reudnitz, Germany, on August 27, 1943. Before Barsch was born, his father was drafted into the German army, and Wulf did not see his father until he was 16 years old. Although World War II ended in 1945, Barsch’s father was a prisoner of war who was moved from Texas, to France, and then to Russia before he was released. All this time, the family assumed he was dead. After the war Wulf, his mother, and his sister unexpectedly had to flee the country, changing their names in order to escape. Barsch received his early art training in Hamburg and Hanover, Germany, from master students of Kandinsky and Klee. An important influence on Barsch, Paul Klee’s idea “that art does not make pictures of nature exactly but it makes something that is a new creation, it makes some feeling or experience with nature a reality,“ is a philosophy that Barsch incorporates in his own art. During his student years, the painter became interested in the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism and the work of Mark Tobey, a devout Bahai. He later studied Egyptian and Islamic culture and history, and that interest is still evident in the recurrent spiritual symbols in his art. A convert to the L.D.S. Church, Barsch served a mission for the Church in northern California and attended Brigham Young University. Wulf received a Master’s Degree in printmaking from Brigham Young University in 1971 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting in 1972. Barsch immediately joined the art faculty at B.Y.U. Barsch’s achievements include international recognition for his paintings and prints. Winner of The Prix de Rome from the American Academy in Rome in 1975, Barsch spent the next year, with his family, working in Rome. Other awards include the Printmaking Award from the Western States Art Foundation, an award for Excellence in Art from the Snowbird Institute, and the Director’s Award from the Springville Museum of Art. Due to his own introspective nature, Barsch believes that each of his works necessitate a private interpretation of spiritual mystical themes from the viewer. Barsch’s metaphorical paintings introduced a new enthusiasm and recognition for Mormon Art during the 1980’s. A leader of the second wave of the “Art and Belief“ movement, Barsch proposes that a culmination of faith, heritage, imagination, and contemporary life is displayed through the use of abstract and geometric designs to emphasize spiritual themes. Dynamic Symmetry, the proportions often called “the Golden Mean,“ undergirds every painting of Barsch’s. The idea of sacred geometry-the proportions of the universe-dates back to the ancient canons. It is evident as the underlying design reflecting the eternal order of nature itself. Mysterious, arcane, and, other worldly, Barsch’s art is geometrical, intellectual, and mystical, but the paint application is just the opposite-modern, direct, wiped, color contrasts, and wet into wet. The effect of these opposites is to create a sense of place in the past relevant to today.

H 81.75 in x W 61.63 in x D 2.13 in

H 80.25 in. x W 60 in.