Eduard Buk Ulreich

Before Egypt Was

c.1940

Painter, sculptor, muralist, designer and magazine illustrator Eduard Buk Ulreich was born in Austria-Hungary and moved to America with his family as a child. Ulreich attended the Kansas City Art Institute, where he studied under Mademoiselle F. Blumberg and later received a scholarship to continue his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After serving in the First World War, Ulreich moved to New York and worked as a WPA artist painting murals throughout the United States. His works include murals in the Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center and United States Post Offices in Columbia, Missouri; Tallahassee, Florida; Concord, North Carolina; and New Rockford, North Dakota. Ulreich additionally designed and painted murals in Chicago for the Temple Building and a marble mosaic mural for the 1933 Chicago World Fair's Century of Progress Exhibition. Ulreich was a member of the Guild of Freelance Artists. He exhibited widely and with success including at the Art Institute of Chicago (1925), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1914-15, 1929–31, 1934, 1939), Corcoran Gallery (1928, 1930), Anderson Gallery (1923), the Whitney Museum of American Art and Gump's Gallery in San Francisco (1943).