California Living

London-born artist Andy Burgess, currently residing in Tucson, Arizona, is known for his renditions of modernist and mid-century architecture, panoramic cityscape paintings, and elaborate mosaic-like collages made from collected vintage papers and ephemera. Lauded by Annabel Samspon, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney”, Burgess continually expands his artistic vocabulary by mastering various media, most recently immersing himself in photography and printmaking.

Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:

Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built. 

By rediscovering and reinventing these architectural gems and bringing them to life again with the brush, Burgess is breathing fresh life into this critical area of modernism and deepening his own exploration of the meeting points between representation and abstraction. 

Alongside the large-scale paintings Burgess creates collages which reflect his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930s -50s, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years; this ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems, dazzling multi-colored pop art pieces, and constructed cityscapes.

In January 2012, Burgess had his first museum exhibit Paper City at The University of Arizona Museum of Art. In 2014, Burgess had his first solo New York exhibition at Site 109. In 2016, he was invited to collaborate with master printmakers at Tandem Press in Madison, Wisconsin to develop a body of work in various printmaking media. Burgess had a pivotal year in 2018 with a solo exhibit, Mid-century Perspectives, at the Tucson Museum of Art, and also the publication of his first monograph Modernist House Paintings: Andy Burgess by Nazraeli Press.

Represented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London, as well as galleries in San Francisco, Laguna Beach, New York and by Etherton Gallery in Tucson, Burgess’s work can be seen at many prestigious international art fairs, including Art Miami, Art Hamptons, The London Art Fair, Art Central in Hong Kong, Art Palm Springs and Art New York.