Burkhard Driest

He was a multitalented, a non-conformist, a rebel, who ruthlessly resisted bourgeois paternalism. On the other hand, he knew exactly how to establish himself as writer, actor, movie director in a bourgeois cultural institution. He did not want to be reduced due to his criminal past in his younger past and still teased with his carreer as bank robber even in old age.

When it came to his paintings, on the other hand, Burkhard Driest exercised great restraint towards any kind of publicity. Only in his paintings, he could completely give himself away. It is no coincidence that one of his paintings entitled “Painter Painting” shows the artist completely naked and in a pose of self-gratification, very similar to his work “Self-Portrait in the Mirror”. 

So, it applies to discover a great artist, whose extensive artistic work the most sustainable and valuable good is, he has left the world. 
The Schuster Collection includes fifty works, which Burkhard Driest painted between 1984 and 1988. They reflect a profound interrogation with social, political, and cultural disruptions in the second half of the 20th century. In powerful, even violent brushstrokes and exploding colors, he sets his anger, his pain, his grief, and lust for life free. Therefore, it is not surprising that he felt connected to expressionist painting in the first half of the 20th century and certainly be understood as a neo-expressionist. His paintings, however, do not deny the knowledge of his contemporaries, such as the works of Francis Bacons. Nonetheless, we should beware not to accuse Burkhard Driest of being concerned with the provocative depiction of evil. His intentions were to resist the demands and injuries of life.  

Driest wrote: “The fascination for evil, as (philosopher) Roger Scruton, for example, accuses today’s artists of, was never my thing. I was with all my fibers an opponent of the Third Reich, whose evil was occupied in a radical and complete way. There was no place for me there. I was attracted to the bourgeois antihero. His name was Zorro, avenger of the poor and disenfranchised, of the desecrated widows and orphans; with wit and poetry it was later François Villon and then with equal wit and nonchalance Paul Belmondo in “Out of Breath”.