Identification

I know very little about the nature of colors; red and black are the most powerful for me. I particularly like blue, because it is the color of the clear sky and the ocean. Sometimes I place my hands on my closed eyes and look at the forms and colors that appear: dots of light, dark blue lakes and seas that change their blue tones slowly and in manifold ways. Violet cloud forms that wander and constantly change, in a way I never see in reality. Nature, on the other hand, has its own language: The more you listen to it, the better you can understand it. And the longer I paint in nature, the more I also see behind the obvious.

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– Urs Burki

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About the artist’s lyrical work

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Urs Burki did not just study the key philosophers of the ancient and new worlds — writing was an important means of expression for him from a young age. During his youth, he would often — to the amusement of his teachers and fellow students — write funny sketches that he then performed in lessons for a bit of light relief.  His entertaining way of describing people and situations was also very well received among the university student population and at family events. Urs Burki left behind dozens of notebooks containing some of his profound thoughts and reflections in fragmented form about life and death, human suffering, socio-political problems, the meaning of life and the role of art in our society. Moments of doubt and of desperation are also expressed alongside fragments of philosophical observations, sketches of planned works of art, mathematical formulae, quotes by philosophers and writers and sketches of children from Nepal, Morocco, Kazakhstan, etc.