Norman Bluhm (March 28, 1921 – February 3, 1999), was an American painter classified as an

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

, and as an action painter.

Biography

He was born on March 28, 1921 in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. His father Henry Bluhm was of Polish Jewish ancestry from Bialystok, Poland. His mother Rosa Goldstein is listed in the 1940 census as having Russian born parents with Russian spoken at home He studied under

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...

at the then Armour (now Illinois) Institute of Technology. After service in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

with the

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

he resumed his architectural studies until 1948. After he studied art at the

Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze ("academy of fine arts of Florence") is an instructional art academy in Florence, in Tuscany, in central Italy. It was founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, under the influence of Giorgio Vasari. ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. From 1948 until 1956 he lived in Paris. He had numerous friends in art, literature, and other creative fields. Among his close acquaintances were

Joan Mitchell Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Sam Francis Samuel Lewis Francis (June 25, 1923 – November 4, 1994) was an American painter and printmaker. Early life Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California,

Jean-Paul Riopelle Jean-Paul Riopelle, (October 7, 1923 – March 12, 2002) was a Canadian painter and sculptor from Quebec. He had one of the longest and most important international careers of the sixteen signatories of the ''Refus Global'', the 1948 manif ...

, Zao Wou-ki and others. He was married to Claude Souvrain until 1956. He returned to the United States in 1956. He married Carolyn Ogle in 1961. They lived in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

until 1969 with their two children, David and Nina. From 1970 to 1980 they lived in Millbrook, New York. From 1980 to 1987 they lived in East Hampton, New York. Thereafter, they lived in East Wallingford, Vermont until Bluhm's death on February 3, 1999.

Art

Bluhm's work has been critically praised and his works are in the collections of many major museums. His career is marked by notable stylistic shifts as he continually challenged himself to reach new areas of artistic achievements based on his profound knowledge of art and art history, use of the human figure, color, and a passion for life. Although his style changed dramatically over time, he remained deeply interested in gestural abstraction, and the ethos of Abstract Expressionism. Among his more noted work are a series of poem paintings done with his good friend the poet

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

. Shortly before Bluhm died, in 1999, '' Art in America'' editor Raphael Rubinstein predicted that the works Bluhm made in the 1980s and 1990s at the end of his career would be as important to the 21st century as Cézanne’s later output was to the 20th.

Comments

Bluhm's work while recognized and praised has never received the measure of attention that some of his contemporaries, such as

and Riopelle, have. In part, this is due to Bluhm's unwillingness to cater sufficiently to those in the commercial art world. Also changing art tastes in the 60's with the advent of Pop Art (which Bluhm found utterly lacking in beauty and passion) placed Bluhm in a critical netherworld. The Estate of Norman Bluhm, in partnership with Edizioni Mazotta, Milan, published a monograph in 2000 on Norman Bluhm with essays by James Harithas, Raphael Rubinstein and Luigi Sansone. In 2007, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston, Texas, organized a major exhibition under the title 'The Late Paintings of Norman Bluh

The Houston Press reported that ''The New York artist’s panoramic paintings are patterned like stained glass windows or mandalas, but the shapes inside are sexy

while Garland Fielder's review at Glasstire mentioned that ''Bluhm’s paintings project such a life-affirming and honest candor, one cannot help but feel awash in a glow of spiritual joy

In 2015, Christie's New York held "Norman Bluhm: Divine Proportion", showing works form the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The exhibition catalog reproduced James Harithas's introduction to Bluhm's 1973 show at the Everson Museum as well as a 1987 interview of the artist conducted by William Salzillo. From February - May, 2020, a retrospective of his work, "Norman Bluhm: Metamorphosis" was held at the Newark Museum, with a catalog that published essays about his work as well as an interview conducted with the artist by Paul Cummings in 1969. The exhibit was curated by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, the Newark Museum of Art’s curator for American art, and guest curated by Jay Grimm, a close friend of Bluhm.

References

External links

Personal websiteNorman Bluhm Bio - Findlay Galleries
* https://www.facebook.com/pages/Norman-Bluhm/174392542611007?ref=ts
Images, a collection of thumbnails of Bluhm's paintings
* ttp://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_37/ai_54454979 ''Obituary'', published in ArtForum, 1999br>Obituary from Art in America, 1999
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bluhm, Norman Abstract expressionist artists Abstract painters Art Informel and Tachisme painters 1921 births 1999 deaths Artists from Chicago 20th-century American painters American male painters United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II 20th-century American male artists