American, 1893–1967FollowRegarded as one of America’s most significant modernist painters, Charles Burchfield was known for his dark, eerie watercolor paintings of Midwestern cities and towns—and the rural landscapes and industrial developments at their edges. Drawing from subjects including design theory, European modernism, and Chinese and Japanese artmaking, Burchfield developed a unique style notable for its deeply personal symbolic language, distorted forms, and quirky, expressive elements. His early work exudes a sense of whimsy, and his depictions of architecture and nature seem alive with energy. The artist recaptured this fantastical sensibility in the 1940s, after a period of painting in a more realistic style. Burchfield rose to fame in 1930, when the newly opened Museum of Modern Art staged a show of his early work—the museum’s first single-artist exhibition. Since then, he’s been the subject of retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art. Burchfield’s work belongs in public collections across the United States and has sold for seven figures at auction.