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for OSCAR FLORIANUS BLUEMNER
OSCAR FLORIANUS BLUEMNER
1867 - 1938
American, 1867 - 1938
Born in Germany, modernist Oscar Bluemner trained there as an architect. He also painted and won awards for his depictions of architectural subjects. After immigrating to America in 1892, he established an architectural firm in New York City. In 1912 he traveled to Europe to see the latest, most innovative art. He returned with a radical painting style using architectonic forms fragmented and compressed into shallow space.
In 1913 Bluemner exhibited his work at the revolutionary Armory Show in New York. He had his first solo exhibition in 1915 at Alfred Stieglitz' 291 Gallery, which featured the most advanced American and European art of the time. Over the years his work took on increasingly romantic overtones, but he never relinquished his earlier cubist vocabulary.
Bluemner used bold, penetrating colors in his paintings; some called him "the vermillionaire" because of his preference for vivid red. Among his sources of inspiration were medieval stained glass and Byzantine mosaics. Bluemner's bold, simplified forms and unusual approach to color give his landscape paintings the appearance of brooding fantasies.
[This is an excerpt from the interactive companion program to the videodisc American Art from the National Gallery of Art. Produced by the Department of Education Resources, this teaching resource is one of the Gallery's free-loan educational programs.]
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