Afterglow

“I prefer the intimate landscape of our common surroundings,” Oscar Bluemner wrote, “where town and country mingle. For, we are in the habit of carrying into them our feelings of pain and pleasure, our moods.” (as quoted in B. Haskell, Oscar Bluemner: Passion for Color, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2005, pp. 44-45) Dominated by overlapping architectures and varied tones of the artist’s signature red coloration, the present work is a rare depiction of Portland, Maine, that reflects Bluemner’s fascination with his industrialized surroundings and the emotions that they evoked.

Bluemner began his career as an architect, and his art is defined by an exactitude of planning. He kept “Painting Diaries,” and the great amount of contemplation and experimentation involved in the creation of the present work is evidenced by the pages dedicated to its creation. A preliminary sketch of Afterglow is accompanied by an annotation identifying its location as Portland, Maine, where Bluemner may have visited in the summer of 1926 when he embarked upon a sketching trip to Quebec. Building upon the complex geometries present in his sketch, Bluemner’s design comes to life in the final composition with color, the driving force of his work. The bright reds below the shining blue sky suggest a sense of life and vitality in the town, while the darker, moodier reds in the foreground may reflect the personal tragedy the artist was enduring following the recent passing of his wife.

Afterglow epitomizes Bluemner’s statement: “I present a surprising vision of landscape by the daring new use of colors: large vermilion shapes hard by the serene blue of our American sky, provokingly assertive of a glad defiance—an ecstatic state of mind.” (Oscar Bluemner in Retrospect, exhibition catalogue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1939, n.p.) Indeed, the present work demonstrates Bluemner’s dedication to depicting America in a distinctly Modern idiom rooted in his unique perspective of color, emotion and form.