Oscar Bluemner (June 21, 1867 – January 12, 1938), born Friedrich Julius Oskar Blümner and after 1933 known as Oscar Florianus Bluemner, was a Prussian-born American Modernist painter.

Early life

Bluemner was born as Friedrich Julius Oskar Blümner in

Prenzlau Prenzlau (, formerly also Prenzlow) is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, the administrative seat of Uckermark District. It is also the centre of the historic Uckermark region. Geography The town is located on the Ucker river, about north of Be ...

Kingdom of Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia (german: Königreich Preußen, ) was a German kingdom that constituted the state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918. Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. ...

(now

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

), on June 21, 1867. He studied painting and architecture at the

Royal School of Art in Berlin The Royal School of Art in Berlin (''Königliche Kunstschule zu Berlin'') was a state-sponsored art school founded in 1869. The school was founded through its association with the Prussian Academy of Arts, and after unification stood as one of Be ...

Architecture

Bluemner moved to

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

in 1893 where he freelanced as a draftsman at the

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

. After the exposition, he attempted to find work in Chicago. In 1901, he relocated to

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 ...

where he also was unable to find steady employment. In 1903, he created the winning design for the

Bronx Borough Courthouse The Bronx Borough Courthouse, commonly referred to as the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, is a building in the Melrose neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City. The courthouse was built between 1905 and 1914 near Boston Road, Third Avenue, St. ...

in New York, although it is credited to Michael J. Garvin. The scandal that arose around this took down borough president Louis Haffen for corruption and fraud.

Painting

Oscar Bluemner - Evening Tones - Google Art Project

In 1908 Bluemner met Alfred Stieglitz, who introduced him to the artistic innovations of the European and American avant-garde. By 1910, Bluemner had decided to pursue painting full-time rather than architecture. He exhibited in the 1913

Armory Show The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of ...

. He said that the Americans' contribution failed to match that of the Europeans because the American selection process reflected rivalries and compromises rather than curatorial judgment, resulting in a "melée of antagonistic examples". Then in 1915 Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery,

291 __NOTOC__ Year 291 ( CCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Tiberianus and Dio (or, less frequently, year 1044 ''A ...

. Despite participating in several exhibitions, including solo shows, for the next ten years Bluemner failed to sell many paintings and lived with his family in near poverty. He created paintings for the

Federal Arts Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

in the 1930s.

Later life

After his wife's death in 1926, Bluemner moved to

South Braintree, Massachusetts Braintree (), officially the Town of Braintree, is a municipality in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Although officially known as a towBraintree is a city, with a mayor-council government, mayor-council form of government, and i ...

. From there in 1932 he contributed a letter to an ongoing debate in the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' on the question "What is American Art?". He wrote: He had a successful one-man show in 1935 at the Marie Harriman Gallery in New York City. In the ''New York Times'',

Edward Alden Jewell Edward Alden Jewell (March 10, 1888 – October 11, 1947) was an American newspaper and magazine editor, art critic and novelist. He was the New York Times art editor from July 1936 until his death. Early life Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, E ...

called it Bluemner's "apotheosis". He wrote: Bluemner died by suicide on January 12, 1938.

Legacy

Stetson University Stetson University is a private university with four colleges and schools located across the I–4 corridor in Central Florida with the primary undergraduate campus in DeLand. The university was founded in 1883 and was later established in 1887 ...

holds more than 1,000 pieces of Oscar Bluemner's work bequeathed in 1997 by his daughter, Vera Bluemner Kouba. In 2009 the Homer and Dolly Hand Art Center at Stetson opened with a primary mission of housing a providing exhibition space for the Kouba Collection. Often overlooked in his lifetime, Bluemner now is widely acknowledged as a key player in the creation of American artistic Modernism, with better-known colleagues such as

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...

and John Marin. In 2013, the

Montclair Art Museum The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) is located in Montclair, New Jersey, United States, a few miles west of New York City. Since it opened in 1914 as the first museum in New Jersey that granted access to the public and the first dedicated solely to a ...

in New Jersey presented an exhibition of Bluemner's works depicting the landscapes and industrial areas of Paterson, painted between 1910 and 1917, drawn from the Stetson holdings. It marked the centenary of the Paterson silk strike, which had inspired his politics. An oil painting by Bluemner, ''Illusion of a Prairie, New Jersey (Red Farm at Pochuck)'' (1915) sold at Christie's, New York, for $5,346,500 on November 30, 2011.

Artworks

Notes

References

External links

A finding aid to the Oscar Bluemner papers, 1886-1939, 1960, in Archives of American Art, Smithsonian InstitutionBluemner's Cat Florianus
*Oscar Bluemner works

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bluemner, Oscar Florianus 1867 births 1938 suicides 20th-century American painters American male painters Modern painters American watercolorists Artists from New York (state) Public Works of Art Project artists People from Braintree, Massachusetts Painters who committed suicide Suicides in Massachusetts Artists from Massachusetts 1938 deaths 20th-century American male artists Prussian emigrants to the United States