“When you feel colors, you will understand their forms.”
–Oscar Bluemner
Oscar Bluemner’s impact and legacy over the past century is analogous to the experience of other leading modernists: embraced in the years leading up to and following 1913’s Armory Show and the 1916 Forum Exhibition, they mostly fell out of favor during the middle decades of the twentieth century, only to be rediscovered in the years following America’s Bicentennial in the late 1970s and 1980s. The story of Bluemner’s life and career are emblems of the friction and benefit of the developing crosscurrents between Europe and America. We believe the market’s reevaluation of Bluemner’s contributions is central to expanding international interest in and understanding of American modernism. Bluemner and the Critics shares the artist’s career and accomplishments through his works of art, writings, theories, and also through the words of America’s leading critics over the broad sweep of the twentieth century.
