Essay
Provenance
P. Neumann
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1971
Private collection, until 2005
Davis & Langdale Company, New York
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York
Private collection, Florida
Exhibited
Davis & Langdale Company, New York, Works on Paper, 2005
Related Works
Silver Lake, 1920, watercolor on paper, 4 ½ x 7 inches, The Raymond L. Balsany Collection, exhibited in Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Joy and Sorrow, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., December 10, 1988–February 19, 1989.
We immediately recognize colors as expressions of human relations… as conveyors of sorrow and joy.
– Oscar Bluemner[1]
Oscar Bluemner was born in Prenzlau, Germany, on June 21, 1867 and originally trained as an architect in the tradition of his father and grandfather. He immigrated to the United States in 1892, leaving “the soil of the old world”[2] behind him, and settled in Chicago. Eventually he became an American citizen. However, life in America proved less utopian for him than he had imagined. He abandoned Chicago for New York, where he befriended photographer and gallery owner Alfred Steglitz several years later. Bluemner gave up architecture to pursue painting and later became a prominent face among the group of Modernists who exhibited at Steglitz’s 291 Gallery.
Bluemner cultivated a strong psychological and philosophical approach to art. He believed that American painting “should reflect ‘a climate and mind of [its] own’ and that ‘landscape, as a motive for expression, undergoes a free transformation from objective [to] subjective vision.’”[3] Bluemner was included in the 1916 Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters, and his work was well received. Despite this positive period, the anti-German climate of World War I and the impending struggles of the 291 Gallery convinced Bluemner to seek a quieter life in New Jersey.
Although American life never offered much nurturance for Bluemner, he was able to escape within his own compositions. A strong belief in the emotive power of color and landscape guided him through his creative process. Ordinary New Jersey towns provided ample inspiration for him. He wrote, “I prefer the intimate nature of our common surroundings [for] we carry into them our feelings of pain and pleasure, our moods.”[4] Railroad Station, Silver Lake, New Jersey is an example of this type of landscape. Bluemner’s composition shows the industrial nature of the landscape, a cooling presence in the foreground of a blazing sun. The vibrant hue of the sun bleeds into the orange sky, suggesting vitality within the confines of the man-made and unnatural. Barren roadside trees strike human-like poses, with curved trunks and limbs pointing upward. Despite the unremarkable setting, the vivid palate and fluid lines of this piece reveal a sense of passion underlying the surface of everyday life.
The pain of life became unbearable for Bluemner, and he committed suicide in 1938, leaving behind a compelling and comprehensive body of work. Paul Rosenfeld, a friend of Bluemner’s, said, “The waters have washed over him. But somewhere in these parts there drift a number of paintings the world cannot afford to lose. Talent…was at the base of them, and talent is rare; and their feeling was ardent, and that is even rarer.”[5]
The Whitney Museum of Art is currently honoring the life and works of Oscar Bluemner in a major retrospective, open until February 12, 2006. His paintings are also in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the Amon Carter Museum, among others.
CAR