"Create and be recognized" commanded a sign that Eugene Von Bruenchenhein hung in his basement studio—both a direction and affirmation. Von Bruenchenhein created 1,080 paintings, and thousands of photographs, drawings, cement masks, sculptures, ceramics, and poetry over a fifty-year period, between the late 1930s until his death in 1983. Though he is recognized today as a self-taught master and polymath, such approbation eluded him during his lifetime. Yet Von Bruenchenhein had no choice but to create. He was compelled by what he dubbed his divine "genii" who looked over his shoulder, and an unwavering belief in his own prodigious talents and special destiny. Ultimately, every corner of the small childhood home in Milwaukee that he shared with his adored wife, Marie, was filled with his art, writings, and recordings.

Von Bruenchenhein was born in Marinette, Wisconsin. His mother died when he was seven years old. He was raised by his father and stepmother, Elizabeth Mosley, a schoolteacher, artist, chiropractor, and author of treatises on evolution and reincarnation. Her unorthodox teachings and interest in the natural world had a profound influence on the young Eugene, who was introduced to the act of artmaking from a young age through her still life studies and his father’s occupation as a sign painter. He was idiosyncratic in his techniques, manipulating paint with his fingers, firing clay pieces in his kitchen oven, and constructing delicate and intricate thrones and towers using leftover chicken and turkey bones from fast food meals. Although he worked in many mediums, it is often Von Bruenchenhein’s photography that initially fascinates, perhaps because of the sheer overwhelming number of images, or perhaps because of the relentless preoccupation with his wife. Von Bruenchenhein and Eveline T. Kalke (1920–1989), whom he called Marie, met at a state fair, fell in love, and were married in 1943. He was a small man, too short to qualify for enlistment during World War II. He adopted the World War II-era aesthetic of pinup girls, Hollywood starlets, and burlesque in photographs of Marie that pose her in the nude or partially clad, bound in pearls and other materials, and clearly imitating depictions of female film stars in promotional posters and other ephemera that were especially aimed at male audiences. The innocently sexual nature of these photographs reveals a trust between wife and husband, exposed in their awkward role-playing.

Von Bruenchenhein’s interest in botany and foliate forms is most clearly evinced in the clay works that he began to develop fully by the late 1960s and early 1970s until his death. He harvested clay from deposits in nearby construction sites and baked the shaped forms in his home’s coal oven. Drawing upon his botanical knowledge, Von Bruenchenhein initially sculpted hundreds of small, individual, flowerlike forms. He began to make crowns for Marie, whom he called "the queen of my existence." Salvaged silver and gold radiator paint provided viable alternatives to precious metals, the stuff of crowns. He also fashioned delicate hollow vessels that miraculously did not collapse in firing, constructed entirely from leaf forms that call to mind cake decorations made with pastry tips, and testify to Von Bruenchenhein’s work as a florist and a baker.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Vessel, 1960s–1980s" exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.