Window on Eternity: The Paintings of Peter Birkhauser



Peter Birkhauser began his artistic career doing graphic design, posters and potraits. A severe mid-life depression led him to Jungian analysis with Marie Louise von Franz. He recorded over 3400 dreams, and began painting from them once he began Jungian analysis. It took him twelve years to finally understand that he needed to paint completely from his imagination. His works capture the numinosity of the dream world as no other artist has.

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The website "The Jung Page," from the Jung Center in Houston, has a wonderful slide show of his work. They also sell a two disc DVD collection, "Peter Birkhauser, a Modern Artist who Breaks the Mold", narrated by Jungian analyst Dean Frantz.

Birkhauser said of the artistic process:

I experience a power within myself which is not the same as my conscious ego. It has forced me to adopt a path quite foreign to my conscious attitude, a path which totally contradicted my will and everything I considered important. Before I was able to obey this power, I first needed to be crushed and almost destroyed. I often felt it was a pity this process had taken so long, but now, looking back over thousands of dreams and the sacrifices of a long, hard development, I can see how valuable the experience has been. (In conversation with Dean Franz, ca. 1975)

This mysterious power has its own will and ends. It knows things that no human being could know. So I'm sure it would not be wrong to give it the name of God. It is after all greater than every human faculty. It is what we impute to God, to know the future, or to know what an individual should do in the decades ahead. (In conversation with Dean Franz, ca. 1975)

A new book on Birkhauser (Window on Eternity) by his daughter (Eva Wertenschlag-Birkhauser) has just become available. This is a summary from the book:

Many of the dream images painted by Swiss artist Peter Birkhauser (1911–76) portray the big problems of our time: our divisiveness, possession by unconscious factors, suffering from the loss of religious values, the Unknown God knocking at the door and wanting to enter, our inability to understand evil, the world of the feminine yearning for redemption, and so on. Because the paintings of Birkhauser come from the deep wells of dreams and give them authentic form, they are mirrors of healing processes in the soul. Marie-Louise von Franz said of Birkhauser's work, "His paintings are not depictions of his own problems, but rather seek to reveal what is taking place in the depths of the collective unconscious in all of the people of our time. Because of this, they are not easy to decipher: they are simply there, and wish to be experienced." This book is an attempt to track down the meanings of the mysteries in the work of Peter Birkhauser. Included are 53 reproductions of paintings by the artist.
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The Jung Page, Peter Birkhauser Gallery
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DVD about Peter Birkhauser
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Wikipedia
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Book: Window on Eternity

http://www.biggerbooks.com/bk_detail.aspx?isbn=9783856307158