Patterned World: The Wallpaper Art of Charles E. Burchfield

Few artists have shaped the story of wallpaper like Charles E. Burchfield. Long celebrated as a visionary painter, Burchfield’s early career experiences—creating camouflage for the U.S. Army and designing wallpaper for Buffalo’s M. H. Birge & Sons Company—directly inspired and informed the discipline and approach in his later work, infusing it with a rare sensitivity to pattern, rhythm, and the emotional power of environment. 

Patterned World reveals Burchfield as an artist who pushed the medium of wallpaper to its expressive limits, while illuminating the role of design as a creative foundation for his transcendental masterworks.

Emerging as far more than decorative backdrops, Charles Burchfield’s wallpaper designs distinctly layer color and graphic elements, freely play with perspective and depth, and deftly disguise vertical and horizontal repeats, inviting viewers into a uniquely timeless and immersive experience—a living landscape, a dream world.

The Burchfield Penney Art Center collaborates with Red Disk to present Patterned World, an exhibition that welcomes visitors to step into and peer through layered environments showcasing Charles E. Burchfield’s historic wallpaper designs—displayed alongside contemporary recreations and rarely seen archival materials.