Eugene Von Bruenchenhein

Exhibition catalogue. Von Bruenchenhein was certain that he and his wife, Marie, were descended from royalty. Having an active imagination obviously served the Milwaukee-based artist well; he was able to cultivate a rich, interior life while living on the meager income he earned working in a bakery. Von Bruenchenhein’s Depression-era thrift enabled him to satisfy an almost pathological need to produce; he recycled cardboard boxes as the surfaces for his rippling, chromatic oil paintings and saved chicken bones to build small, exquisite fairy-tale thrones and intricate towers, which he embellished with leftover automotive paint using brushes he made from tufts of Marie’s hair.