Oscar Florianus Bluemner

The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is painting. Alfred Stieglitz is recorded as an influence. Places of work recorded in the authority are United States. Work by Oscar Florianus Bluemner is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Phillips Collection.

• Name — Oscar Bluemner • Birth Name — Friedrich Julius Oskar Blümner • Born — 21 June 1867 • Birthplace — Prenzlau, Kingdom of Prussia (now Germany) • Died — 12 January 1938 • Place of death — South Braintree, Massachusetts • Known for — Painting, architecture • Training — Royal Academy of Design, Berlin • Notable Works — Bronx Borough Courthouse

Bluemner was born as Friedrich Julius Oskar Blümner in Prenzlau, Kingdom of Prussia (now Germany), on June 21, 1867. He studied painting and architecture at the Royal School of Art in Berlin.

Bluemner moved to Chicago in 1893 where he freelanced as a draftsman at the World's Columbian Exposition. After the exposition, he attempted to find work in Chicago. In 1901, he relocated to New York City where he also was unable to find steady employment. In 1903, he created the winning design for the Bronx Borough Courthouse in New York, although it is credited to Michael J. Garvin. The scandal that arose around this took down borough president Louis Haffen for corruption and fraud.

• Illustration — Evening Tones • Illustration — Form and Light, Motif in West New Jersey (1914) • Illustration — Old Canal Port • Illustration — Illusion of a Prairie, New Jersey (Red Farm at Pochuck), 1915 Starting 1910 Bluemner aspired to paint according to the principles advanced by Alfred Stieglitz. Bluemner exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show. He said that the Americans' contribution failed to match that of the Europeans because the American selection process reflected rivalries and compromises rather than curatorial judgment, resulting in a "melée of antagonistic examples". Then in 1915 Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery, 291. Despite participating in several exhibitions, including solo shows, for the next ten years Bluemner failed to sell many paintings and lived with his family in near poverty. He created paintings for the Federal Arts Project in the 1930s.

After his wife's death in 1926, Bluemner moved to South Braintree, Massachusetts. From there in 1932 he contributed a letter to an ongoing debate in the New York Times on the question "What is American Art?". He wrote: He had a successful one-man show in 1935 at the Marie Harriman Gallery in New York City. In the New York Times, Edward Alden Jewell called it Bluemner's "apotheosis". He wrote: Bluemner died by suicide on January 12, 1938.

• Year — Title — Image — Collection — Comments • 1927 — Loving Moon, watercolor, possibly with a surface coating — Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York City, New York • 1932 — Imagination, casein with ground watercolors (prepared by the artist) on paper board — view — Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. — IAP 08260662