At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism

Born 1867 in Prenzlau, Germany
Died 1938 in Braintree, MA

German-born Oscar Bluemner arrived in the United States in 1892 after training as an architect. By 1908, he had turned to fine art and joined the circle of modernist painters affiliated with Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery. Like others in this group, Bluemner rejected illusionistic realism in favor of art that communicated emotions. For him, the key was color. His first modernist paintings employed flat, geometric planes of bold color to depict the industrial landscape of New Jersey. Their exhibition at 291 in November 1915 came just as anti-German sentiment was escalating. Critics denounced his work as “alien” and “malevolent,” with the result that nothing sold. Undeterred, Bluemner focused on portraying “the life-movement of the spirit”—a term used by British scholar Laurence Binyon, whose work Bluemner studied closely—by densely layering arabesques and rounded forms and creating glossy, jewel-like surfaces that resembled lacquered ones. Expanding on his connection between color and emotion, in 1930 he began to associate shapes with psychological qualities, using this approach to depict archetypal human dramas. A critically successful exhibition of these works in 1935 at New York’s Marie Harriman Gallery signaled brighter financial fortunes, which previously had kept Bluemner on the edge of poverty. Tragically, just after the show opened, he was hit by a car and soon suffered a series of health issues, including an eye cancer that left him unable to read or paint and took a severe mental toll. He died by suicide on January 12, 1938.