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Lot Essay
Oscar Bluemner, born in Preuzlau, Germany in 1867, emigrated to the United States in 1892, the same year he won the Royal Medal in Germany for his painting of an architectural subject. Having studied to be an architect, his early artworks are sketchy designs for buildings. This architectural thread ran throughout his career as a painter, his works often defined by black outline and clearly delineated shapes of color. First established as a major American modernist after his one-man show at Alfred Steiglitz Gallery's 291, Bluemner went on to have 6 other one-man shows in New York City, "the last, at the Marie Harriman Galleries shortly before his death, was a sensation." (John Davis Hatch, "Foreward", in Oscar Bleumner, 1867-1938, New York, 1970)
The present work, Triad Brilliant, Passaic River Hills is surely a landscape to which Margaret Bruening's observations are applicable. Ms. Bruening, in reviewing Bluemner's 1935 Arts Club of Chicago exhibition, writes, "His 'Landscapes' are only points of departure to regions of subjective imagery ably sustained by the artist's color patterns. Houses or trees may be red or green, skies may be blue or crimson, it does not matter, for the artist is not attempting to set down any realistic account of the world but an orchestration of brilliant colors, usually played in the upper reaches of the scale with big crashing chords of black to sustain the theme. When Gauguin painted a violet-colored horse he affirmed the right of the modern artist to occupy himself with his own reactions to the world, rather than with its faithful delineation: in these canvases, which are only color improvisations, and very handsome ones, upon landscape themes, this point of view is emphasized." (as quoted in J.R. Hayes, Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Sorrow and Joy, Washington, 1988, p.72) Landscapes, for Bluemner the freest forms of expression, were refined by the artist "in terms of 'pure color' and related to the extraordinary emotional power of his favorite musical composers." (Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Sorrow and Joy, p. 72)
Bluemner's last published words sum up his style, "I paint my attitude. I try to say in paint through our environment here what came with me from Europe, what re-shaped itself here, in forty-five years. I left Europe for America expecting to find and put in color what was not at home, without at all knowing it. I have seen in gutters, slums, slaving places, hovels, common homesteads, politics, business-good and bad, and in homes of our wealthy, the counterpart of America: bluest ever sky and black night. I should be a writer, I would be a composer, but being all retina, I saw it all as color." (Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Sorrow and Joy, p. ix)
The present work, Triad Brilliant, Passaic River Hills is surely a landscape to which Margaret Bruening's observations are applicable. Ms. Bruening, in reviewing Bluemner's 1935 Arts Club of Chicago exhibition, writes, "His 'Landscapes' are only points of departure to regions of subjective imagery ably sustained by the artist's color patterns. Houses or trees may be red or green, skies may be blue or crimson, it does not matter, for the artist is not attempting to set down any realistic account of the world but an orchestration of brilliant colors, usually played in the upper reaches of the scale with big crashing chords of black to sustain the theme. When Gauguin painted a violet-colored horse he affirmed the right of the modern artist to occupy himself with his own reactions to the world, rather than with its faithful delineation: in these canvases, which are only color improvisations, and very handsome ones, upon landscape themes, this point of view is emphasized." (as quoted in J.R. Hayes, Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Sorrow and Joy, Washington, 1988, p.72) Landscapes, for Bluemner the freest forms of expression, were refined by the artist "in terms of 'pure color' and related to the extraordinary emotional power of his favorite musical composers." (Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Sorrow and Joy, p. 72)
Bluemner's last published words sum up his style, "I paint my attitude. I try to say in paint through our environment here what came with me from Europe, what re-shaped itself here, in forty-five years. I left Europe for America expecting to find and put in color what was not at home, without at all knowing it. I have seen in gutters, slums, slaving places, hovels, common homesteads, politics, business-good and bad, and in homes of our wealthy, the counterpart of America: bluest ever sky and black night. I should be a writer, I would be a composer, but being all retina, I saw it all as color." (Oscar Bluemner: Landscapes of Sorrow and Joy, p. ix)