Oscar Bluemner

Oscar F. Bluemner

(1867-1938)

Cider Mill

Watercolor and pencil

6 ¾ x 5 inches

16 x 14 3/8 inches framed

dated and titled (at lower left): 1924 Cider Mill

Ex. Coll: Pensler Galleries, Washington, D.C. until 1997; to private collection, Connecticut to present.

Framed with an 8 ply cream mat and brown/black frame.

Oscar Bluemner came to the United States from his native Germany in 1892. Trained as an architect, Bluemner's interest gradually shifted towards painting. He was encouraged by Alfred Steiglitz and began painting full time in 1911. The next year, Bluemner traveled to Europe where he saw the work of Cezanne, van Gogh and the German Expressionists. By the time Bluemner returned to America he had developed his own modernist idiom. Five of his paintings were included in the Armory Show of 1913.

After the Armory Show, Bluemner began to paint and draw New Jersey town, farms, canals and factories. These intensely colored landscapes synthesized natural and abstract form. Bluemner's 1924 move to Elizabeth, New Jersey marked a new period in his career. He had a solo show at J.B. Neumann's New Art Circle Gallery. Bluemner comments on his work from 1924, when Cider Mill was painted, in the following way, "I am able to let the simple objects of a scene, a house, a tree, a sky or water be my actors…and use the shapes resembling theirs to correspond to the retrospective tones of any personal color themes my imagination conceives."