Comprehensive Retrospective (to be on a new page that’s linked at the bottom of the Short Biography page)
Eduard Ulreich: The Evolution of a Modernist
By Katherine Burkhardt, May 2004
Eduard Ulreich was born in “Old Europe” under the reign of the Hapsburg Empire. He was raised and later trained as an artist in a traditional manner. Yet, out of this conservative, conformist, and backward-looking environment, grew an individualistic and imaginative modernist voice. When viewed from any dimension – stylistically, philosophically or in subject matter – his painting is modernist in approach. Yet, the body of work Ulreich produced in nearly 60 years of serious painting can hardly be placed in a single category or style, except in the broadest terms. His picture-making changed dramatically over the broad span of his long and varied life. Insert EBU 1 photo and caption
For most of his career, Ulreich painted in a non-representational style, employing a distinct linear approach, broad expanses of vivid and symbolic color, and a flat, foreshortened perspective. Philosophically, Ulreich often painted ideas or concepts, rather than specific objects. He sought to paint the “truth” of a subject, rather than its physical reality. And with regard to subject matter, for most of his career he rejected traditional, natural or romantic themes, choosing instead to paint subjects, or more accurately, design compositions, which told a story or symbolized a “truth.” Insert EBU 2 photo and caption
Classifying Ulreich as a modernist would have made him rebel as he himself rejected all such classifications, staunchly insisting that he followed his own personal and original inspiration. A 1925 interview in Art World noted, “Mr. Ulreich does not identify himself with any particular school. He says that his only claim to modernism is that he is doing it now.”
Beyond such broad characterizations of Ulreich’s work, his artistic career can be classified more discretely. Although lagging the original movement by 30 years, philosophically, Ulreich seems to fit best with the Symbolists. For Symbolists, artistic expression was not a means of simply reproducing the natural, but rather a means of expressing one’s innermost beliefs and feelings through the use of symbolic color, design, and image. Ulreich’s painting, Peace Be Still has a strong resemblance to Symbolist Odilon Redon’s Orpheus. Stylistically, Ulreich’s work is elusive. There are elements of influence from the Florentine masters of the 1400s, there are the color and decorative elements of the Fauves, the decomposition of forms in the Cubist style, and the absurdities of the Surrealists. Ulreich’s watercolor, Overjoyed, shares the same contorted bodies as Picasso’s Large Nude in a Red Armchair. Similar to other modernists such as Picasso, Kandinsky and Chagall, Ulreich experimented in a variety of styles placing a high personal value on inventiveness and imagination in his work. Insert EBU photos 3-6 plus captions
To comprehend Ulreich’s artwork, it is essential to understand his background, his personality, and his spiritual beliefs. Ulreich was raised in a restrictive, tightly knit family by an emotionally distant father and three older sisters. Ulreich’s mother died when he was five. The combination of an absent mother, a stern father and three doting sisters reveals itself in Ulreich’s recurring portrayal of idealized feminine beauty.
Another layer of influence was geography. Ulreich was raised on the edge of the American frontier, in Kansas City, MO, swift on the heels of the Wild West era. Western themes appear in his work throughout his life.
Ulreich’s personality was complex and contradictory. He was self-centered, self-indulgent and highly individualistic, rebelling against supervision, authority or classification. Yet, he could be generous, open-minded, highly optimistic, and desirous of motherly support and attention.
Possibly the greatest influence on Ulreich’s paintings were his spiritual beliefs, borne out of his adherence to Christian Science. In the early 1920s he adopted its spiritual teachings and created a framework for his mature artistic style. It was an inside-out view suggesting that the “real world” is the spiritual world. The world in which we live day-to-day is only a dream and a bad dream at that, filled with sickness, greed for material possessions, and ugliness. Ulreich’s imagined real world was a realm of truth and beauty. In a December, 1926 essay in the Kansas City Journal Post, Ulreich writes: “Art is in its highest sense a reflection of Truth (infinite intelligence) fashioned by the hand of love, appealing to the spiritual rather than the material sense. A work of art is only so when it is truly inspired.” Ulreich equated beauty with truth, believing that beauty is “the perfection of truth.” Consistent elements in Ulreich’s paintings are “dream-like” or spiritual settings, combined with the use of design and decoration to heighten the sense of beauty (and truth). Insert EBU 7 photo and caption
Ulreich’s serious artistic efforts spanned nearly 60 years. His life in art began with the western themes of the 1890s. He witnessed and participated in the dawn of the modernist era. And his life ended as Abstract Expressionism and various other styles of contemporary art matured. Although Ulreich boasted of his individuality and independent thought, his work evolved, often reflecting the times and artistic movements that marked his lifetime. This is the story of that evolution.
Ulreich was born on February 12, 1889 in Köszeg, Hungary, a community of German-speaking people located near the Austrian border. One of five children, Ulreich was the youngest son of Samuel and Mary Ulreich. Ulreich’s father was a boot maker. Seeking economic opportunity, the family emigrated to the United States when Ulreich was six months old. They settled in Kansas City, MO, the home of an uncle. Although Ulreich’s parents never fully adopted the language of their new country, the Ulreich siblings adapted quickly to American culture and language. The family began to establish roots; Ulreich’s father opened a shoe shop, the siblings enrolled in public schools, and the family joined the First English Lutheran Church, reflecting their German cultural heritage. Insert EBU 8, 9 photos and captions
Kansas City in the 1890s was still a frontier town, although it was rapidly emerging as an urbanized center from its earliest roles as an outfitting post, a shipping point for cattle from the west, and a trading center for agricultural products. Evidence of the Old West was abundant. Kansas City remained a Mecca for cowboys bringing cattle to slaughter. Wild West shows still provided a popular form of entertainment, especially for young boys. In Ulreich’s 1930 autobiography, looking back on his childhood, he noted, “When Buffalo Bill came to town with his Wild West show, it was heaven-on-earth for me.” Ulreich’s interest in the West was further enhanced by the picture magazines such as Collier’s, which regularly reproduced the dramatic western scenes of Frederick Remington and Charles Russell.
Ulreich’s mother died of tuberculosis in 1894, when he was five. Although his father remained head of the house, he was distant and preoccupied with his work. Ulreich’s three older sisters, Theresa, Mary, and Louise, took responsibility for raising young Eduard. Gleaned from correspondence throughout his life, it is clear that Ulreich loved his sisters, and for him they were both protectors and providers. At times, he was dependent on them, at other times he could be resentful of their authority. Insert EBU 10 photo and caption
In his autobiography, Ulreich recalled: “At six years old, I began to experience the joy of making pictures.” Grammar school records show he was an average student with strong marks for deportment and application. He later said that what he enjoyed most about school were the art classes. His earliest subjects were cowboys and Indians copied from magazines and postcards. Insert EBU 11 photo and caption
In 1908 Ulreich enrolled at The Fine Arts Institute in Kansas City (later renamed the Kansas City Art Institute.) He studied drawing and painting under Alexandra Blumberg, a graduate of the Académie Julian. The Fine Arts Institute employed a traditional approach in teaching. A school catalogue of the period describes the coursework as “founded upon the serious study of drawing from life, the antique and from objects.” It is this method (of instruction) that is “admitted to be the surest way of obtaining efficiency in all the various branches in the arts of sight.”
After two successful years at The Fine Arts Institute and seeking a broader educational experience, Ulreich was awarded the William L. Elkins Memorial Scholarship to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). At the time, the PAFA was the most renowned art school in the U.S. and was also known for its conservative academic traditions. Initially Ulreich was intimidated by the number and talent of the students around him, yet he was selected to study under Cecilia Beaux, the first female instructor at the PAFA and its foremost teacher at the time. Beaux had attended the PAFA and had also trained at the Académie Julian in Paris. While attending the PAFA, Beaux took instruction from famed American painter Thomas Eakins.
Ulreich’s paintings of this period are strongly academic in their approach reflecting the influence of his traditionalist “French Method” instructors, Alexandra Blumberg and Cecilia Beaux. Strong evidence of Eakins’ influence can also be seen in Ulreich’s work of this period. Among other genres such as athletic and medical scenes, Eakins was well known for his quiet but expressive portraits of famous personalities, fellow Philadelphians, and Catholic clergy. Some of Ulreich’s early portraits bear strong likeness to the work of Eakins. Insert EBU 11, 13, 14, 15 photos and captions
Ulreich studied at PAFA several years, however, some of his most powerful educational experiences came not from the studio, but from trips to Europe and the American West during his studies.
During a year away from school in 1911-1912, Ulreich traveled to the West on two occasions. In the summer and fall of 1911, he rode freight trains from Kansas City to the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, observing the beauty of the West and immersing himself in Indian culture, living on an Indian reservation in Pine Ridge, SD. In the spring of 1912, Ulreich bought a mare and embarked on a solo horseback ride from Kansas City, MO to San Carlos, AZ. Fighting loneliness, snow and rain, Ulreich rode 1,150 miles to El Paso, TX before abandoning his horse for more modern transportation. Ulreich traveled the remaining distance to Arizona by train. There, he worked several months as a cowboy, employed by the Chiricahua Cattle Company, During both trips, Ulreich sketched the people and environment around him. The boundless expanses of the West as well as the simplicity and spirituality of its primitive peoples enchanted him. He was also captivated by the wild horses he encountered. He mentioned in his correspondence that members of his cowboy “outfit” were trying to capture some of the thousands of wild horses on the range, yet he noted, “they are too wild and too wise to be caught.” This theme and subject informed much of Ulreich’s later painting.
Upon his return to the PAFA fellow students gave him the nickname, “Buck,” after learning of his adventures in the West. He later shortened the name to “Buk.” To his sisters, he remained “Eduard,” but to his future wives and the to the art world, he was known as Buk Ulreich.
During his time at the PAFA, Ulreich was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship in both 1913 and 1914. The award paid for European travel during which students were expected to paint and visit the important museums and galleries of the day. In 1913, Ulreich traveled to Europe, visiting Berlin, Munich, Paris, London, and other European capitals. The art centers that impressed him most were Munich and Paris. Of Paris, he said, “I have learned a great deal from the works of art in this country and I feel that it will help me to a great extent to improve my work.” However, the museums and galleries of Munich were of particular interest to him, reflecting a new vision of art, not yet seen in the U.S. In later years, he wrote about the inspiration he found from “the Germans” in Munich. Although not mentioned specifically in his letters, the so-called “Germans” were presumably members of Der Blaue Reiter, a group of modernist painters whose groundbreaking art exhibits had taken place in Munich only months before Ulreich’s visit. Ulreich’s later work seems to particularly reflect the influence of Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, leaders of the Der Blaue Reiter. Insert EBU 16 photo and caption
Kandinsky, known for emphasizing the spiritual and inner impulses in his artwork, was a forerunner of abstract expression. While Ulreich’s comparative works were painted years later, Kandinsky’s influence still remained strong. Insert EBU 17, 18 photos and captions
Marc’s affinity for animals, and in particular, the horse, struck a highly responsive chord in Ulreich, whose recent experiences in the American West had created in him an admiration for the creature. Marc’s modern interpretation of the horse, stylized and released from the strictures of representational color and setting, made a lasting impression that manifested itself throughout Ulreich’s career as a painter. Insert EBU 19, 20 photos and captions
In 1914, Ulreich’s second trip to Europe began in London, soon moved to Paris, and then to Madrid where Spanish music, dance, and bull fighting sparked a lifelong passion. From Madrid, Ulreich traveled to Venice, where his trip was abruptly changed by the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. Disappointed that he could not return to the vibrant art center, Munich, Ulreich instead traveled south through Florence, Rome, and Naples before sailing to the U.S. in September. The impact of the time Ulreich spent in these Italian art capitols was revealed in later works that reflected both classical and Florentine imagery. Insert EBU 21 photo and caption
After completion of his training at PAFA in 1915, Ulreich spent the next few years in various midwestern and eastern cities seeking to establish himself as an artist, yet engaging in commercial artwork to provide income. He was not committed to commercial work saying, “In the commercial field I hardly think I should be really successful for my heart is not in it. My craving is too strong for self-expression.” His distaste for commercial work and the pressure to earn an income led him to endorse, if only temporarily, socialist ideals. In letters from 1917 and 1918 Ulreich blames the capitalistic system for the oppression of artists and other working people. In a self-indulgent moment, he laments what he views as an injustice: “The artist must cater to the market instead of the market catering to the artist.” During this period, he also encourages others to support the socialist party and to read various publications such as The Masses, The Liberator, and The Call. Insert EBU 22 photo and caption
In 1917, Ulreich participated in a four-person exhibition at the Twogood Gallery in Kansas City. The Kansas City Star wrote a review in which Ulreich was prominently featured. The article said: “The most evident fact about Mr. Ulreich’s painting is that he is dissatisfied with the usual way of going about painting a picture, and he wants to find a way that will enable him to say things he must now leave unsaid. That is praiseworthy. And in going out on his voyage of discovery he steers an uncharted path. It is easy enough in this day of new prophets to find a ‘method,’ not so easy to go about finding one for oneself. Mr. Ulreich forgets largely about form and devotes himself to painting the world in a flat fashion that makes one suspect of him, of having projected himself back to a time when the world wasn’t round at all. He sticks to conventional enough subjects, Indians on horses, and in their painting he gives them a new romance by the likeness to cave and wigwam pictures, which his flat perspective carries. Making his pictures flat leaves much more emphasis on composition and design.”
Ulreich was evolving his modernist style, progressing beyond the narrow parameters of his academic training. Only two years removed from his training at the PAFA, Ulreich was already painting in a non-representational manner, focusing more on composition and the overall message of his work, rather than its reportorial quality. The subject matter was consistent with earlier work, but was rendered in an evolving modernist idiom.
By late 1917, Ulreich was spending time in New York, a city he described as the place for an artist, after Paris. He did a number of commercial projects until he was inducted into the Army in mid-October of 1918. Based in Hempstead, NY on Long Island, Ulreich served only two months before World War I ended, avoiding any live bullets or combat. Tongue-in-cheek, he wrote to his family in early December 1918, “The war is over and I’m back from the Battle of Long Island.”
By late 1919, Ulreich headed west again, locating for several months in Los Angeles, CA. There, he painted portraits of the famous modern dancers Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, and Martha Graham. He also executed a frieze for the interior of the Denishawn dance studio. In partial payment for his work, he received instruction in modern dance, which strengthened his existing interest in Spanish dancing. He remained in contact with Martha Graham for the rest of his life and used the rhythm and movement learned in dancing as an inspiration for much of his later painting.
In mid-1920, Ulreich was invited to join former PAFA classmate, Lex Szabo, in painting church interiors in Lorraine, OH. Although a profitable venture, the Szabo-Ulreich partnership was short-lived as Ulreich found the work monotonous and lacking creativity. Ulreich decided to move to Chicago, IL following the invitation of a former Fine Arts Institute (Kansas City) classmate, Alex Rindskopf. The move would prove both artistically and financially fortuitous.
Upon his arrival in Chicago in December, 1920, Ulreich met William Perrin, an art director at J. W. Thompson Advertising. Perrin took a personal interest in Ulreich and gave him steady commercial work and strongly encouraged him to exhibit his paintings. Ulreich performed commercial work for the Burlington Railroad, Wadsworth Watch Case Company, and Red Seal hair care products among other clients. Taking the advice of Perrin, Ulreich entered three pictures in The American Show, in 1921, a juried exhibition sponsored by the Chicago Art Institute. All three entries were rejected. In response, Ulreich recruited other “rejected” artists and organized an alternative exhibit, the Salon des Refuses (The Exhibition of the Refused). The Salon des Refuses featured a group of paintings that Ulreich noted were “not subject to the standards of an academic jury.” This is further evidence of Ulreich’s emerging modernist sensibility.
In early December 1921, Ulreich wrote to his family that he planned to marry Nora G. Woodson, a native of Kansas City, whom he had known for only six months. The ceremony took place December 10 before a local judge. Woodson, who went by the name “Nura”, was also an artist, having studied at the Fine Arts Institute in Kansas City. Ulreich’s marriage was a major turning point in his life for more than the obvious reasons. Nura had a significant impact on Ulreich’s artistic career. She was sophisticated, articulate, well organized, and a natural promoter. Whether it was Ulreich’s maturing artistic style, the vigor of the 1920s economy, or the powerful influence of Nura’s management skills, the pace of Ulreich’s career would soon accelerate. Insert EBU 23 photo and caption
Another influence Nura brought to Ulreich’s life was Christian Science. Early in their marriage, Ulreich began to appreciate the religion’s teachings, which he believed to be based on logic and reason and far superior to traditional Christian beliefs.
Nura was readily accepted by Ulreich’s three sisters who had been skeptical of their brother’s previous female companions. However, they felt that Nura was different; they recognized her talents and virtues as a human being. She was immediately accepted into their clannish family. Although his fierce independent spirit would not have allowed him to admit it, Ulreich needed Nura and found in her the supportive, motherly qualities that his sisters had previously provided. Thus began a marriage, and a successful business partnership.
Early in 1922, two of Ulreich’s paintings were accepted by the Chicago Art Institute’s Twenty-Sixth Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity. Building on this success, Nura met repeatedly with the head of the Chicago Art Institute to arrange future exhibitions for Ulreich’s work. He soon exhibited in an international watercolor show at the Chicago Art Institute for which three of Ulreich’s pictures were selected from thousands of entries from all over the world. Ulreich also obtained a commission to decorate the Black Cat Room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel on the North Shore of Lake Michigan. Reflecting Ulreich’s interest in the culture, the room was executed in a Spanish motif. Ulreich and Nura organized an opening gala in a Spanish theme to celebrate the introduction of Ulreich’s work in the Black Cat Room. Insert EBU 24 photo and caption
In early 1923, Ulreich participated in two more exhibitions at the Chicago Art Institute and continued to enjoy a steady flow of commercial artwork commissions. Seeking a broader audience for both fine art and commercial projects, Ulreich and Nura moved to New York City in June 1923.
In September, Ulreich sold a cover design to Vogue magazine for its November 1923 issue. And, in what became the launching pad of Ulreich’s career as a recognized artist, he was given a one-person show at a prominent New York venue, the Anderson Galleries. The show opened December 3, 1923, comprised of western themes and portrayals of “dreamy” feminine figures. The exhibition received critical acclaim. The New York Herald Tribune reported: “Cowboys, who relinquish steer roping for art, as a matter of custom, generally continue their Wild West adventures on canvas by perpetuating scenes a la Remington. So the exhibition of Eduard Buk Ulreich, signing himself Buk, now showing at the Anderson Galleries, and lacking in these specifications is a new note by a man who has followed the trail of the southwest. Buk who is most versatile in his selection of subjects, delineates a nymph, a vampire or a scene from ancient Egypt with equal ease.” Insert EBU 25 photo and caption
The Minneapolis Tribune reported: “Buk has made a splash in Gotham art circles, he also has caught the public’s fickle favor and is being lionized right and left. People are flocking to the Anderson Galleries to view his pictures and to get some first hand information on breaking savage broncos. The cowboy artist waived the suggestion that the remarkable originality of his work might be due, in part, to the influence of his early environment. Rather, he declared, it springs from his persistent refusal to become identified with any school or art clique. His dominant purpose is to bring out the essential characteristics of a subject. The result is generally far from being a photographic likeness, but the personality of the sitter is revealed more fully than by artists who follow the conventional method. In Buk’s work one finds a curious mixture of the archaic and the modern even in paintings of classic subjects handled in an ultra-modern style, there is a suggestion of the primitive.” According to Ulreich, “primitive art was truer than the modern product. It is less superficial and expresses the artist’s noblest ideals. The primitive (man) turned to art as a means of self-expression. He painted solely for the love of painting. Sincerity is a quality conspicuously missing in modern art.”
The themes and the style of the work shown in the Anderson Galleries exhibition persisted in Ulreich’s work for almost the next thirty years. Although not exclusively so, the two themes that endured were western scenes and “other worldly” images of graceful, pretty, yet cool and somewhat remote female figures, often arranged in groups of three or more. What is common between these themes is the beautiful and decorative nature of the work. Yet, the psychology behind each theme is different. The western-themed paintings are simpler to understand. They often contain cowboys, but are more likely to include portrayals of noble Indians. Ulreich loved the pure, innocent and primitive culture and lifestyle of the Indian. The work reflects this view. The pictures of female figures are more complex, if not in composition, in motive. The female figures are idealized, they are goddesses or other desirable, but unattainable creatures. They are not quite human. The dominant women in Ulreich’s life were matronly – or sisterly. He desired beautiful woman, but was distanced from them. The feminine creatures that consistently re-appeared in Ulreich’s work represented for him the ideal of feminine beauty that he never found until after Nura’s death in 1950. The dreamy nymphs of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s disappeared by 1950. Insert EBU 26 photo and caption
In February, 1924, Ulreich participated in an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art entitled Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture by American artists. Commenting on the show, the Baltimore News reported: “The paintings by Eduard Buk Ulreich indicate a very strong and soaring artistic imagination. His work is another evidence of the triumph of instinct over circumstances and environment, for there is nothing even American, much less Middle West, in it. True, he studied abroad and thus had abundant opportunity for the broadening of his viewpoint, but expression such as this is not the result either of eclecticism or physical experience. Much of it is Oriental in flavor and the effects he creates are often strange in their mythic suggestion. His use of color and his preference for the fantastic and the bizarre indicate perceptions utterly foreign to materialistic impulses and manifestations. The emotional appeal of the art is uppermost and one must pierce beneath the surface to discover its secret.”
Late in 1924, Ulreich was given a second one-person show, this exhibition at the Conrad Hug Gallery in the artist’s hometown, Kansas City. The month-long show, which focused heavily on western themes, opened December 1. In an interview in the Kansas City Star, Ulreich clearly articulated the primitive and spiritual nature of his artistic expression and his purpose in portraying truth and beauty. He said: “The Indians, not in frequent contact with the Whites, have less education than we have and are therefore more spiritual. Their art, too, is purer than ours because it is not hemmed around by academic traditions.”
“When art becomes too surrounded by tradition and the artist’s desire to please the public, it loses its reason for being. But the savage still has his eye on the living lines, the glowing colors and the movement he wishes to reproduce in clay, painting, woven work or dancing. It is this ideal of beauty, the perfection of truth, that I am attempting to follow. Pictures and sculpture are not art. Art is a principle and the artist gives expression to his glimpse, faint or clear, of this principle. But in this material state of existence we must use material mediums in order to be comprehended. A true artist doesn’t study so-called nature, but he studies the law that reveals the spirit that gives life to his canvas or clay.”
Ulreich’s recognition continued to grow. In March 1925, he was awarded a special exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute, featuring twenty-four modernist watercolors. The five-week show opened March 17, and drew positive reviews from the conservative Chicago Tribune. Critic Eleanor Jewett wrote: “His is a method of treatment that infringes upon the primitive and the Oriental. The pagan element of slippered damsels in flowing robes and unbound hair is a principle ingredient of his decorative canvases. His colors are rich, almost Oriental in their depth and abundance, his designs are complex and carried out with a wealth of intriguing detail. The apparent movement of his figures discounts any sense of weight that the lavish ornamentation might threaten.”
Art World reported: “Mr. Ulreich strikes a distinctly original note and those who like something out of the ordinary will be gratified by his ventures into strange new fields. With a predilection for vivid color, the artist shows a rhythm of line and a charm of composition sure to win the approval of the conservative layman, while the extreme modernists will acclaim him a member of their camp.” The Chicago Post reported: “Twenty-four watercolors by Eduard Buk Ulreich on exhibition at the Art Institute are humbly described in the catalogue as ‘decorative paintings.’ Not that they are not decorative – they are intentionally and intensely so. But they are so much more than just decorative that it seems a pity to fasten on them a description that it generally accepted to mean something much different that what Mr. Ulreich’s paintings really are like. Mr. Ulreich has a lively imagination and does not keep it under restraint. More than that, he can crystallize his images and put them into color and form without losing any of their spontaneity. His forms have a simplicity in line that is not overwhelmed with the volume of careful detail which he works into many of his paintings. His action figures have lightness and motion, his color is rich and surely handled. The exhibition is decidedly not one of a spirit struggling for self-expression. It is rather one of a spirit naturally and easily articulate.”
Flush with the confidence gained from critical acclaim in New York and Chicago and having achieved a modest level of financial security, Ulreich and Nura decided to spend a year living in Paris. They found an apartment in the Montmartre on the rue de Maistre. From their sixth-floor apartment, they had a panoramic view of the City of Light. The Ulreichs found in Paris numerous friends and acquaintances from Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. They visited galleries, museums, and the famous salons of Paris. They dined at the fashionable restaurants of the Parisian intellectual and art scene, La Rotunde, Le Dôme, and Lutetia. They visited the Left Bank, the Moulin Rouge, Place Pigalli, and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. They immersed themselves in the vibrant cultural scene that attracted so many ex-patriot Americans. Insert EBU 27, 28 photos and captions
Within five weeks of arrival, Ulreich had arranged a one-person exhibition to be held in March 1926 at the Gallerie Bernheim-Jeune, which was, according to Nura, “one of the oldest and very best of Parisian galleries.”
The Bernheim-Jeune exhibition opened March 8, 1926 comprised of forty-three pictures across a wide range of subjects. Art News reported: “(Ulreich’s exhibition) was one of the successes of the season, a success there is the more reason to call attention to as it is the first time that the artist has exhibited in Paris, and also because the Parisian public has the reputation of being rather fastidious. His manner of seeing and of rendering things is always that of a poet, and it is perhaps to this quality that he owes his success. Instead of seeing life as an ugly thing, he sees it as beautiful and transfigures it with what may be called the poetic gift. Ulreich is above all a ‘plastic’ artist; but he feels as a poet does the beauty of the real world, and translates it in harmonious and rhythmic forms, lines and colors as a poet might who was at the same time a painter. Something sane, free and childlike animates his compositions, which without in the least resembling them, make one think of Greek vases of gothic tapestries and Italian faience (decorated earthenware); of Persian miniatures and Indian and Mexican ornaments; in a word of all forms of art produced by humanity when the world was young. Slim and dainty, like Greek nymphs or Nordic elves, graceful figures of women animate his compositions. As to the landscapes in which these lovely girls take their pleasure, as rhythmic as they with their conventionalized trees and unexpected flowers, and the delightful animals which people them, they awaken a delicious sense of peace and innocence and make one dream of a lost paradise. From this comes the profound feeling of repose breathed by Ulreich’s works which is their special distinction.”
Following the exhibition, Ulreich and Nura vacationed in Biarritz, northern Spain, and Lake Annecy near Geneva and the Alps. Returning to Paris in early July, they occupied a new apartment on fashionable Avenue Duquesne where they continued to paint. Before departing for New York in October, both Ulreich and Nura exhibited paintings in the famous Salon D’Automne. Their pictures were among 700 selected from over 5,000 submissions. Insert EBU 29 photo and caption
Returning to New York, the Ulreichs moved to Charles Street in Greenwich Village. Ulreich was soon awarded another one-person show at the Dudensing Galleries in New York. The exhibition, comprised of paintings of cowboys, Indians, nudes, and Spanish bullfighters, opened March 14, 1927. Reporting on the Dudensing exhibition, The New York American quoted a somewhat “puffed-up” Ulreich, “There is nothing in New York I care to paint. My interest is in primitive, spiritual things. I hope people will realize that I am stressing the spiritual, imaginative note in my paintings. Why should I paint realistically? I might as well take a good photograph. I have always studied my subject matter before I started to paint. When I wanted to do Indians, I turned cowboy. When I wanted to do bullfighters, I went to Spain and hung around the arena.” The New York Times wrote: “The decorative work of Buk appears from time to time and has always had a refreshing character of its own. It is bold in its big linear patterns and sweeping rhythms that draw many of the designs into swirling movement of complexity. The simpler compositions are usually the best, although in some of the small and intricately patterned paintings there is particular richness and depth of color. The decorative canvases with motifs taken from western life, Indians, animals or prairies have an unconventional and original development of themes that many other artists have rendered in a monotonous, hackneyed manner.”
The most famous art critic of the day, Royal Cortissoz, writing in the New York Herald Tribune said: “There is another artist exhibiting just now, Mr. Eduard Buk Ulreich, who brings ideas to his work, ideas showing that he has had glimpses that would make us less forlorn. He is a curious type. At times, he seems to leave technique to take care of itself. Then again he draws with delightful ease and precision.”
“But despite this charming production, and the excellent treatment of the figures that crop out repeatedly in the collection of about forty pieces, we would place the emphasis less upon his workmanship than upon the refined color in certain of the tapestry designs and upon the engaging quality of his fancy. If he were a more sophisticated artist we should say he derived from Botticelli. As it is, there is something in him akin to the old Florentine, something of artless grace, of unforced poesy. He weaves his romantic figures into groups that may be a little awkward now and then, but that have, not withstanding, a savor of beauty about them. We would that he were a more disciplined, more instructed craftsman yet we are not sure that academic training would not kill the creative instinct he undoubtedly possesses.”
Nura wrote to the family after the Dudensing show, “The exhibition closed yesterday amid smiles on the part of all. There were about seventeen sales, and the best part of it was the type of sales they were, one for the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collection, and a discriminating collector became an ardent advocate of Buk’s, and started his collection with a very fine picture. Then a number of artists bought, which is a very high tribute to another artist’s work; and I think we had more general appreciation this time than at any previous show.”
In May 1927, Ulreich agreed to do a series of paintings commissioned by N.W. Ayer & Son Advertising and the RCA Victor Company, portraying nineteen different opera scenes (Fig. ES-30). The series ultimately won accolades from the opera, the recording, and the advertising worlds. Insert EBU 30 photo and caption
In November 1927, Ulreich sold an Indian painting to famed Washington D.C. art collector, Duncan Philips. In January 1928, Ulreich was awarded another one-person exhibition, this at the Edward Side Gallery in Philadelphia. In conservative Philadelphia, the critics were at odds. The Philadelphia Ledger wrote, “Curiously enough, after his many experiences in the West with Indians and horses, he has gathered to himself more of the savor of land and peoples than ability to project that savor through mature craftsmanship. At times his efforts are almost puerile, at others, sensitive and subtle. The craftsmanship may leave much to be desired, but the thought is there. The painting does not reproduce nor does it endeavor to do so. Rather it creates. And it is just such ability of mind and imagination in our younger artists that forces one to decry so bitterly the trend toward a let-down in basic craftsmanship.”
By contrast, C.H. Bonte, in the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “The Indian pictures give a refreshingly simple slant on life in the west. They are remarkable instances of coincidences in subject and treatment, for, if its so-called primitive method of painting be anywhere appropriate, as the thoughtful are sure to grant that it is, then its application to a primitive subject is decidedly apropos. It must be remembered too, that the arch modernist finds the art of the Indians themselves much to his liking and in entire consonance with his artistic theories. These Buk episodes of Indian life have been executed with the utmost simplicity, with an even childlike naiveté of line. But what decorations they form and what a relief they are from the usual purely realistic landscapes and figure paintings of which the world contains almost too many. Mr. Buk has enjoyed high and conspicuous success in Paris and in various cities in this country, where only the hide-bound ultra-conservatives have failed to take him seriously.”
Later in 1928, the Ulreichs decided once again to embark on an extended European visit to concentrate on painting. This time they selected Vienna out of admiration for the work of the artists of the Secession and the Weiner Werkstatte. They sailed October 4 arriving in Paris ten days later, then stopping in Munich and Salzburg on their way to Vienna. They rented quarters on the fashionable Landstrasse and found the Viennese people gentle and fun loving.
During their stay, they visited the traditional museums, the Weiner Werkstatte, and the inspiring modernist gallery, The Secession. Nura wrote the family in April that “Buk has three pictures hanging in The Secession, the big modern gallery here. It is quite an honor for a stranger to get one picture in here, let alone three. Privately, I think they are the best in the whole show, and I say this without partiality. Sometimes I don’t so much care for certain of his pictures, and the same with him in regard to mine, but I think that is more healthy than a sentimental “ooshiness” with regard to anything one another paints.” In an accompanying letter, Ulreich mentioned that Nura’s work was barred from the Secession because she is a woman. The Ulreichs departed Vienna in early July 1929 to visit his ancestral home in Köszeg and then on to Budapest, Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin, before sailing home from Hamburg. They arrived in New York in September and moved into an apartment on East 79th Street.
In the fall of 1929, Ulreich prepared for one of the most acclaimed exhibitions of his career. The exhibition at the New Dudensing Galleries in New York also marked the beginning of a long decline in his fortunes. The stock market crashed October 29, three days before Ulreich’s exhibition began. The month-long exhibition, entitled Modern Americans, opened November 1.
Royal Cortissoz of the New York Herald Tribune writing about the New Dudensing exhibition said: “A blending of the primitive such as one finds in the lyrical grace of a Botticelli, with the methods of an efficient modern, goes far in the paintings of Buk to produce sensations leading to a cordial acceptance of his work. His exhibition at Dudensing Gallery is filled with results of a year’s work abroad, which, while concerned with new ideas he managed to retain interest in the charming decorative themes peculiar to his past invention. Divided into two well-defined groups, the show includes figure paintings, several of them large and ambitiously devised like the extraordinary ‘Music of Spain’ and ‘Woman’ which tend to symbolize an idea rather than interpret reality, and an interesting variety of purely American motives, gleaned no doubt from the back of a memory filled with exciting impressions of Western life. Buk’s feeling for fantasy is eloquently expressed in a painting like ‘Glorious in the Morning Sun’ or ‘Path of Flowers’ where gracefully drawn maidens move in lyrical cadences through landscape of Italianate loveliness. ‘Woman’ on the other hand is a large nude of daring color combination, the gray of the sensitive Botticellian figure being contrasted strongly and strangely, if the truth be told, with its unbroken black background. Yet it is too, a kind of synthesis of the qualities of dignified charm and femininity ideally associated with the subject. In the smaller oils, Buk employs Indian and cowboy motives with particular imaginativeness in designs flatly suggestive of fresco decorating but with a lively and vivid sense of color. This makes a particularly attractive exhibition, giving access to a decorative craftsman of unusual grace and inventive power.”
Henry McBride in the New York Sun wrote: “Buk, it seems was once a cowboy on the Western plains. Then he got to the Philadelphia Academy. Then he won some scholarships. Then he went to Europe. Now he returns, exhibits in the Dudensing Galleries and proves himself an artist with possibilities. He evidently had a lovely time browsing around in European galleries. He picked up the idea, which is an excellent one, that all paintings should be beautiful. He went in especially for design. He noticed Giotto or some other such decorator. He noticed tapestries. He noticed Piero della Francesca. He doesn’t paint particularly in the manner of these people, but vaguely his present aspiration is in their direction. He appears not to have settled definitely upon one style as yet, and it may be that when he resumes contact with the hard stirring, businesslike movement of American life, he may lose some of his early Florentine sense of design. In the meantime it is distinctly pleasant to see what Piero della Francesca would have thought of our western ranch life and I think New Yorkers could do far worse than buy Buk’s paintings. Piero della Francesca’s conception of a round-up and of a gathering of Indian chiefs is I assure you, very different from what we have been accustomed to in this line.”
Despite wide critical acclaim, the impact of the stock market collapse limited sales. Yet, Ulreich remained forever an optimist and looked forward to other planned exhibitions. His next major exhibition began in April 1930 at the Walden-Dudensing Gallery in Chicago. An article in the Chicago Evening Post, reviewed the exhibition: “Buk’s painting is done in his mind apparently before he approaches his canvas, or bit of pasteboard, or scrap of white paper on which he eventually gives birth to his ideas. There is no striving for simplicity, and there is certainly no striving for effect. His painting is as spontaneous as frost pictures on a window, and the thing that endears them most to this reporter is the fact that they never aim to be important or bombastic. The long trail of Buk’s art winds most certainly back to Botticelli and the Florentines. His talent for expression is inextricably mixed with his ideas of decoration, and in Buk’s case this is a happy thing. He has also a very definite talent for the appropriateness of color to subject.”
“There is something attractive, too, in the fact that Buk has made his Indians and Wild West conform to that dreamlike quality, which is own particular expression. He does not endeavor, as does Martin Henning, to photograph the West, not as do many of the other Americans, to glorify it. He simply epitomizes it in what colorful phrases are most convenient to him. One of his pictures was most amusing to me because in it I could see a little gazelle from Marit Laurencin, one of Chagall’s funny little houses, a tree from Picasso and what might be called the ectoplasm of survage, and yet, it all seemed to be Buk’s unconscious tribute to these artists. Most of the time he is no copiest. He comes down to the footlights and sings his song, in spite of his audience, as spontaneously as the first spring robin, and if you find the song unimportant, it is because life has not yet taught you the grandeur of simple things. He is the sort of person to have a great popularity, and very little appreciation, for behind the things that make Buk’s pictures attractive and obvious, and even at times pretty, there is something much deeper. There is that little jewel – perfect self-expression. There is made manifest the personal equation that differentiates Buk from every other artist in the world, from every other person in the world. The identity if a blade of grass could if it be isolated would be an interesting thing. It is the first requisite of great art that the artist’s identity goes into his work. His perfect and separate difference from every other artist is a more lasting and important thing than skill, form, color or medium. It is, in short, originality.”
In addition to his primary focus on exhibiting his artwork, Ulreich continued to accept commercial projects, one in particular for Guerlain Perfumes won an award at the 10th Annual Exhibition of Advertising Art held in New York in 1931.
In October 1931, one of Ulreich’s paintings, Forms, was selected to appear in the Thirtieth International Exhibition of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Later, Ulreich began work on a series of black and white horse studies and terra cotta horse sculptures, which would serve as the foundation for his predominant horse motif in the late 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. Insert EBU 31, 32 photos and captions
In 1932 concerns increased about the economy as sales from exhibitions and commercial projects dwindled. Like many other artists of the day, Ulreich began to rely on public projects to sustain himself financially. In August 1932, Ulreich was declared the winner of a competition begun in the previous spring for a mural design to decorate the Industrial Arts Pavilion at the upcoming Chicago Century of Progress Exposition. His mural was composed of a series of fourteen panels, symbolically portraying different aspects of American industry. The mural, which was designed to adorn the exterior of the Industrial Arts Building, was to be a marble mosaic 430 feet long and 30 feet high.
In October 1932, Ulreich was selected to paint a mural in Radio City Music Hall, in New York, depicting a western scene. Entitled The Wild West, it was completed in November just before the opening of Radio City Music Hall in December 1932. The mural, adorning the third-floor men’s smoking lounge, is still in place today.
To conserve money the Ulreichs moved in 1932 from the Upper East Side to a more affordable studio and rooms on East 40th Street. In 1933, in order to generate additional income, the Ulreichs began a series of popular sketch classes that endured until the early 1950s.
Although exhibition opportunities became scarce, in late 1933, both Ulreich and Nura participated in a show at the Macy Galleries in New York. Among the other works displayed were paintings by Bonnard, Braque, Derain, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, Renoir, and Hopper.
In 1934, Ulreich participated in the Thirtieth International Exhibition of Watercolors, Pastels, Drawings and Monotypes at the Art Institute of Chicago. Due to their popularity, sketch classes were expanded to two nights a week. Later in 1934, Ulreich commenced work on two separate Works Progress Administration (WPA) murals in the New York area. The first was a series of eight panels under the general title, Things in Nature of Interest to Infants, and was installed in the children’s ward of the City Hospital on Welfare Island. The second was a larger project at the Woodside Library in Queens. The series of 10 panels installed in the children’s room of the library was entitled The Evolution of the Art of Writing.
In the mid-1930s, opportunities for private exhibitions were limited. In December 1935, Ulreich participated in a WPA exhibition in New York. In November 1936, he participated in an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York showing several WPA mural sketches. However, 1937 proved to be a more eventful year for Ulreich, as he obtained two major mural commissions. In July, he completed two 88-foot panels for the exterior of the U.S. Pavilion Building at the Paris Exposition. The Pavilion, which opened July 4, was decorated with an ornamental design using symbolic motifs from American Indian tribes. On a side note, at the same Paris Exposition, Picasso unveiled his masterwork, Guernica, in the Spanish Pavilion.
In August 1937, Ulreich completed two murals, entitled The Pony Express and The Stage Coach, for the U.S. Post Office in Columbia, MO. The Kansas City Times wrote of the murals: “The two historic murals by Buk Ulreich are more dramatic than most of the painting for federal buildings. The subjects are The Stage Coach with Indians lurking ready to attack, and The Pony Express, with a lone horseman fleeing from ghosts conjured up by his fears. Ulreich has definite ideas in the field of decoration, white horses with feathers in their neatly knotted tails for example. By ignoring one aspect of the real, the muralist sometimes achieves another, and this is what has happened in Columbia’s new murals. Stylization has helped to give force and clarity to the idea.” Although now moved to different locations in Columbia, MO, both murals are still on display. Insert EBU 33 photo and caption
Ulreich’s mural work in the 1930s lacked some of the individuality displayed in his works of the 1920s due to the constraints of painting historical themes for broad public audiences. As with much of the WPA mural art, Ulreich’s themes were allegorical and always required pre-approval by the WPA or a sponsoring local public institution. Ulreich became an ardent student of history, often traveling to the locale where a mural was to hang to absorb the context and environment first hand. Ulreich’s mural work was representational, but varied somewhat from the Social Realist and Regionalist artists painting at the time. Ulreich’s work was flatter, less representational and more likely to make use of symbols to convey his message. His work also made use of unique color as symbolic language in communicating his vision.
By 1939, Ulreich had evolved his portrayal of horses. His exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance was praised by a Philadelphia newspaper: “In spite of a de Chirico derivative in his treatment of horses with flowing manes and tails, he has an imaginative flair all his own. First you are impressed by the startling decorative quality of his work; next by its sculptural inference; and finally by its delicacy. Buk thinks in tri-dimensional terms, smoothly hewing his figures, nude or draped, through contrasts of black and white, ivory-yellow and black, pearl-pink and black. Yet his handling of form like the handling of line is delicate.” Insert EBU 34, 35 photos and captions
In April 1939, Ulreich traveled to Tallahassee, FL to install a series of eight murals depicting the history of Florida. The murals were installed in the U.S. Post Office and Federal Courthouse Building. The Tallahassee Newspaper reported, “the historic material is handled with great freshness and imagination. Ulreich uses color with strength and delicacy, intricate composition submitting well to the dominance of one or two central figures in each study. Brilliant red and blue and white is set against the pale lemon yellow of Florida sunshine and the subdued sandy rose of the tropical landscapes.” The murals remain in place to this day.
As he entered the 1940s, Ulreich retained his predominant themes of the West, of dreamy female figures, and of horses, yet he began to experiment with abstraction. The New York Times in September 1940 reported that despite the threat of war, five galleries had opened the art season with new exhibitions. The article reported: “Perhaps the most appealing of these newly opened displays is that of Buk Ulreich at the Bonestell Gallery. He is pre-eminently a creative artist and blends his medium to his will with grace and a captivating air of ease. He likewise plays with the objective and the non-objective (Fig. ES-36) often in the same design, with equal felicity. Needless to say, he handles representation with discretion to make this possible. Still, it is there when wanted, delightfully suggestive or definite as the occasion seems to demand, with never a hint of the camera. Although the artist’s aim seems primarily to be the creation of rhythmic and coherent design that in itself will hold the fancy, he employs a wide variety of motifs, i.e. the American Indian. He had even borrowed de Chirico’s horses, but handled them in a way that makes them entirely his own.” Insert EBU 36 photo and caption
In 1940, Ulreich also exhibited his latest mural sketches at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The sketches were for a mural installed later that year at the U.S. Post Office in New Rockford, ND, entitled Advance Guard of the West. In February 1942, Ulreich installed his final WPA mural, The Spirit of North Carolina,at the U.S. Post Office in Concord, NC.
Through the mid-1940s, exhibitions were non-existent, WPA projects ceased, and Ulreich had few commercial projects. The lack of work took a toll on Ulreich’s confidence and his personal life. In September 1946, Nura wrote a private note to Ulreich’s two remaining sisters. She reported that their marriage had encountered difficulties in recent years. “Buk is running the sketch classes alone and very successfully. It is re-establishing his confidence in himself and his own abilities.” She goes on to say that Ulreich never wanted to be married and that the two of them were more or less in a partnership in the art world. In 1945, Ulreich asked for a divorce but eventually recanted. Nura reported that she and Ulreich were friendly and cooperative with each other. She wrote, “He is still very dear to me and I would do anything to further his interests.” They continued to live together through 1947 and most of 1948. In September 1948, Nura moved to a nearby hotel. In a letter to the family she reported that Ulreich was living alone in his studio and had gained a little weight. “He is simply a lone wolf and likes best to operate independently.”
In late 1949, Ulreich wrote a controversial editorial, about the origin and significance of modern art. His essay was titled, Abreast of the Times. He wrote: “With the violent change in outward manifestation (of art), coincident with the turn of the 20th century, the false standard, by which the so-called traditionalists held sway, lost its grip. The reorientation now in process aims for a higher concept of standard, which is destined to embark the art world toward a new renaissance. In 1913, on a trip to Europe, I found Germany in particular provided a great revelation to me with its summer art expositions – far superior to anything in America – even at the height of our season. America was invaded the same year – 1913 – by the Armory show. Modern Art had crossed the Atlantic, and the battle has raged ever since to establish its legitimate claims. No conservative argument can stem its advancing surge. The so-called realistic artists are in large measure deluded, bogged in the mire of materialism, wasting a wishful hope to stem the tide of progress. It is vain to slumber when the mind is on the march. No intellectual architect today thinks in terms of Gothic or Greek architecture. So it must be in painting or sculpture. We must cease to cling to the past. Progress has provided new materials, new tools, new directions. The American artists lack the support of a progressive and participating public. If we are to match the leadership of other countries, a more lively interest in art is demanded of all. Works of art are the best teachers – and Picasso is the giant instructor. No one in history has blessed the world with so many and varied ideas. While I am a rugged individualist, going my own way, I have learned a great deal from the works of European artists. The things I have always felt, Picasso and the other modern European artists pointed out to me. Let us take advantage of today’s rhythm, and keep abreast of the times.”
On October 25, 1950 Nura died after a long illness. Ulreich wrote to his family,” Nura was blessed with many friends and was a great gift from God. She had a gift for creative expression that was divine, greater than most people know. To our human sense we wish she could have continued with us.”
In early 1951, Ulreich met Virginia McFarland, a student in his sketch class. They developed a close relationship and were married within the year. “Geni,” as Ulreich called her, dreamed of becoming a fashion artist and was participating in sketch classes to hone her skills. Ulreich’s sisters questioned the marriage given Ulreich and McFarland’s age difference (she was 31, he was 62). In a series of letters, Ulreich vigorously defended his new companion.
Throughout the 1930s, the 1940s and into the early 1950s, Ulreich continued to explore the horse as an artistic motif. Ulreich’s most challenging intellectual themes as well as his ideals of freedom and beauty are expressed in his horse sculptures and paintings. Recalling his experiences 30-40 years before, witnessing wild horses on the open range, Ulreich used the horse as a symbol of grace, beauty, and freedom. He also added symbolic elements to horse paintings to comment on themes such as spirituality, war, justice, freedom, and even protection of animals and the environment. These paintings in some instances lacked the decorative beauty of earlier works yet they were more thought provoking and conveyed a deeper message. The horse became an expression of his own desires, beliefs, passions and fears. Insert EBU 37 photo and caption
Although Ulreich had experimented with abstraction as early as 1940, his use of this mode of artistic communication began to accelerate in the mid-1950s and continued until the time of his death in 1966. Ironically, he would leave New York (for San Francisco) at the time the center of the art world moved from Paris to New York in part on the strength of the work being done by Abstract Expressionists in New York. Ulreich experimented in various styles of abstraction, some work very similar to the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
There are even traces in some of Ulreich’s painting of the splattering technique of these action painters. Ulreich experimented with geometric abstraction that referenced the work of Piet Mondrian. By the early 1960s, he was experimenting with collage in the style of Robert Rauchenberg. However, in the final years of his life, Ulreich’s abstractions became darker, less linear, and possessed less energy. The overall tone of his work in the last few years of his life became more somber and reserved, standing in stark contrast to the variety and playful use of color present in earlier paintings in his career. Insert EBU 38, 39, 40, 41 photos and captions
In Ulreich’s last major exhibition in New York, the theme was horses. The show was held at the Associated American Artists Galleries and opened March 16, 1953. The exhibit featured 22 paintings, each a different treatment of the horse motif. The titles listed in the exhibition catalogue gave strong indication of the meaning and intent of the work: Unfenced, Freedom’s Call, Happy Times, Majesty, War No More, Inspiration, Coming of Spring, and Fourth Dimension.
The paintings varied in size, some canvases rather compact, others quite large per the example set by the Abstract Expressionists of the day. Colors employed in many of the paintings did not reflect nature and were used symbolically to convey mood and emotion. The works all shared a relative flatness of perspective and often the subjects were somewhat decomposed in the Cubist style, particularly evident in Parade. Most canvases included groups of horses. Groupings of horses, or previously of female figures, was a recurring element in Ulreich’s work. Whether it was a composition device, or a reflection of Ulreich’s gregarious and outward social nature, or specifically in the case of his horse paintings, a true picture of the social structure of wild horses, is not certain. Observation of Ulreich’s work and life suggests that each element played a role. Insert EBU 42 photo and caption
As has been noted previously, while many of the canvases suggested the Cubist influence of Picasso, there was also strong reference to the work of de Chirico. This is especially true in Ulreich’s, War No More in which symbolic objects lay scattered on the ground surrounding the subject horses, suggesting, it seems, that mankind should trample the tools of war beneath its collective feet.
In mid-1954, in a letter to his family, Ulreich notes that he and Geni visited the Guggenheim Museum and carefully studied the non-objective paintings on display. Although Ulreich had been experimenting with non-objective canvases for several years, the production of such works increased mid-decade. Later in 1954, Ulreich and his new wife moved to San Francisco, eventually establishing a studio and rooms at 1527 Pine Street near the main commercial and office center of the city. Their move was precipitated by loss of their lease on East 40th Street in New York. Rather than finding new accommodations in New York they decided to move west following Geni’s family who had moved to the Bay area several years before. As Ulreich was evolving to a more abstract style of painting, the recognition of such work was increasing, especially in New York, under the leadership of figures such as Pollack, de Kooning and Motherwell. Insert EBU 43 photo and caption
In 1955 and 1956, Ulreich obtained one-person exhibitions at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the San Jose Public Library respectively. Both shows featured primarily horse pictures that had been painted in earlier years. The San Jose News wrote: “Being unfamiliar with Buk’s work, the first impression I gained while viewing the exhibit was of a strikingly individual and spontaneously expressed inventiveness, which speaks out directly in his highly decorative painting.”
“The predominant theme is horses. Buk is something of a paradox. Some of his canvases—notably the decorative ones – are enormously sophisticated in style and execution while in others he seems to let technique take care of itself. He obviously has a predilection for intense, often weird color, but his sense of design is extremely craftsman-like. His approach is always geared to the subject at hand, and because he is obviously a man of intense individualism, almost everything he does comes off with its own peculiar kind of flair.”
Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ulreich continued to have small exhibitions around the San Francisco area. Although he received strong support and a number of exhibition opportunities from San Francisco gallery owner Ed Lesser, Ulreich’s work failed to find an appreciative audience. Letters to the family during this period began to take on a more plaintiff tone. Ulreich was dismayed over his lack of recognition and financial success. He also complained of health problems and mentioned frequent episodes of discord with Geni.
In 1960, there were moments of happiness and sadness. In February, Geni and Ulreich managed to scrape together enough money to take a trip to Mexico. They drove as far south as Mexico City, returning through the Mexican state of Chihuahua, through Nogales and into El Paso, TX, where Ulreich had arrived on horseback 49 years earlier. The moment must have been bittersweet. In 1911, El Paso and the West held the promise of freedom and opportunity for Ulreich. In 1960, the West was providing neither for the aging cowboy artist.
In 1962, three of Ulreich’s four siblings were now gone. His own health was failing, for which he sought ongoing counsel from his Christian Science practitioner, Grace V. Dickinson. He did not see a medical doctor out of adherence to Christian Science teachings. In a series of letters spanning the late 1950s through 1966, Ulreich repeatedly asked for advice on his health and struggling marriage. As an observer far removed from this exchange, it is an interesting and somewhat pathetic dialogue between an emotional and suffering Ulreich and an unemotional and impersonal practitioner who lived in New York and suggested repeatedly that it was Ulreich’s own failings of faith that were the cause of his deteriorating health.
In separate correspondence during this period, Geni mentioned Ulreich’s suffering and depression over his deteriorating circumstances. It appeared that both Ulreich and Geni were struggling, each looking for support the other could not provide. Earlier in his life, Ulreich depended on his sisters and then on Nura. With Nura’s death and the deaths of two of his sisters, Ulreich looked to Geni for strength, support and encouragement. She was unable to respond in a way that satisfied him; neither could his Christian Science practitioner.
Despite his failing health, feelings of failure and loneliness there remained a spark of optimism in the old cowboy. In May 1966, two months before his death, Ulreich wrote to his niece in Kansas City, sending along some of his sketches for her collection. He suggested that she might want these sketches because they could be worth something in the future “when I make it big in the art world.”
Eduard Buk Ulreich died July 23, 1966 in San Francisco. Ulreich’s life was an evolving story, He was always striving, always seeking a new and better recipe for artistic expression, for financial well-being, for companionship and for spiritual understanding.