Conrad Buff II, (1886-1975)

Conrad was a feisty individualist throughout his life, was one of Los Angeles’ earliest and most provocative western landscape painters. Born in Switzerland in 1886, as a young man he apprenticed as a baker and confectioner, later entering a state-run trade school of lace design. Soon after he left for Munich where he began painting. When he was eighteen he immigrated to the western United States. Buff earned a living herding sheep, making pastry, working as a rail hand and painting houses. He also produced small oils on canvas which he sold for fifty cents each.

In 1907, he arrived in Los Angeles. He found work as a yardman at the Lankershim Hotel, then as a pot washer and cook for the Westmore Hotel. Buff then began working as a house painter, which led to him becoming a contractor in Eagle Rock. Buff married Mary Jordan Marsh, the assistant curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1922. They had two sons. together they produced thirteen children’s books which Mary wrote and Conrad illustrated. they traveled in the Southwest, Switzerland and Italy, Japan, Guatemala and Mexico to gather research materials.

In 1920, Buff had his first one-man show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Between 1920 and 1930 he was associated with early California landscape painters such as William Wendt, Jack Wilkenson Smith, Donna Schuster and Guy Rose. These artists were members of the California Art Club, a group which held yearly exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and met regularly at the home of art patron Aline Barnsdall. Buff also knew artist Edgar Alwyn Payne and Franz Bischoff.
Despite these relationships, Buff was artistically an iconoclast. His style did not conform with the acknowledged Eucalyptus, Sierra, or Desert School painters. He applied bold colors using the pointillist style of French Impressionism, and he emphasized architectural forms found in nature. This unique combination pushed him toward abstraction, and he was called a modernist in a 1920s exhibit organized by Peter Krasnow. In the 1920s and 1930s he produced numerous murals on commission. During this period, architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Michael Schindler were among his close friends.

During the 1930s a nine month long government work program allowed Buff to concentrate on his painting, producing ten major works. Dividing his efforts between creating fine art and a livelihood, he began making colored lithographs which his wife sold to schools. In 1936 the Buffs began publishing children’s books. During the war years he worked privately as a painter, illustrator and architectural color consultant. He traveled throughout Arizona and Utah with landscape artists Maynard and Edith Hamlin Dixon.

In the 1950s, Buff remained a landscape artist. He painted many interpretations of Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley, Zion Park, the High Sierras, and the Colorado River. The blue sky fascinated him, and he worked throughout his life to capture a particular color and apply it in a manner that was symbiotic with the terrain. Buff used increasingly stronger color to show the clarity of the atmosphere. His brush strokes became broader as he pursued two essential elements in his artistic development- architectonic form and color application. (more)

Pasadena Society of Artists
2002 April 6-June 16
75th Annual Diamond Jubilee Exhibition, Pasadena Historical Museum, Pasadena CA

Biographic excerpts from Conrad Buff II Western Landscapes Exhibition catalog produced by Security Pacific National Bank, 1983. Additional information is available from the Oral History Department of University of California, Los Angeles.

Tujunga, Shadow Lake, Sierra, The Mittens > images from “Conrad Buff II, Western Landscapes 1920-1975” Exhibit Catalog from the Gallery At The Plaza, February 7 - April 3, 1983; Security Pacific National Bank; Tressa Ruslander Miller, Cultural Events Director, Security Pacific National Bank Photography: Thomas P. Vinetz