 In the last decades of his life, Burkhardt's work had moved from images of imbalance to a study of human tragedy—which he embraced in an attempt to discover beauty and facilitate understanding.Critic Peter Frank called Burkhardt “…one of America’s most vital abstract expressionist painters, someone who took the seed of the movement and cultivated it a rather different way in very different soil,” and historian Eugene Anderson declared Burkhardt “Goya’s spiritual heir.”

Burkhardt taught at numerous colleges and universities and retired as a professor emeritus from California State University, Northridge.In 1992 Burkhardt was honored as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Jimmy Ernst Award.