Peter Blume - ACA Galleries

P R EV I EW I N G U P C O M I N G E X H I B I T I O N S , EV E N TS , S A L E S A N D AU C T I O N S O F H I S TO R I C F I N E A RT
AMrICAN
ISSUE 19
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Jan/Feb 2015
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GALLERY PREVIEW: NEW YORK, NY
Art in Full Blume
The first Peter Blume retrospective since 1976 inspires exhibit
of lesser-known works from the artist’s estate
Through January 31
ACA Galleries
529 W. 20th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
t: (212) 206-8080
www.acagalleries.com
B
efore Robert Cozzolino was
an art history major in college,
he became fascinated with a
painting that would forever impact his
life: The Rock, by Peter Blume (1906-
1992), at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The colorful painting (1944-48)
spanning 29 square feet was inspired
by “the continual process of man’s
rebuilding out of a devastated world,”
according to Blume, reported by
LIFE in 1949. Like much of Blume’s
work, the painting spurs a myriad
of stories, touching on contrasting
themes of destruction and rebirth
while highlighting urban takeover of
natural land.
As Cozzolino spent more time
looking at The Rock and was drawn in
Peter Blume in his studio, 1972. Photograph courtesy Inge Morath, ©Magnum Photos.
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to modern art galleries, he switched
his major’s emphasis from Northern
Renaissance art to American art.
Now, as senior curator and curator of
modern art at Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts, he’s put together
his dream project: the first Blume
retrospective since 1976, Nature
and Metamorphosis. The exhibit runs
concurrent with New York City’s ACA
Galleries’ Blume exhibit, showing off
nearly 70 lesser-known works of the
artist, including preparatory drawings,
oil sketches and sculptures.
Peter Blume (1906-1992), Study for Boulders of Avila, 1975. Oil on canvas, 22 x 38 in.
Peter Blume (1906-1992), Autumn, 1988. Serigraph, ed. 44/99, 24 x 26½ in.
There are the beginnings of a new
house in the upper-left corner of The
Rock that represent Fallingwater, a
home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
in 1935 that served as the residence
for Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann, who
commissioned the painting. At ACA
Galleries, visitors may see Blume’s
pencil on paper, Façade of Falling Water,
a much more representative sketch of
the building that is a sharp contrast
to the innards of the not-yet-built
structure in The Rock.
Visitors to ACA Galleries, which
represents Blume’s estate, will see
Blume’s evolution as a modernism
and narrative painter, gaining insight
into how Blume prepared for his
masterpieces.
“It’s interesting to see the wheels
of his mind turning and see how his
works finally materialize,” says Mikaela
Sardo Lamarche, who has served as
ACA Galleries’ curator for the past
10 years, and who says reaction to the
exhibit has been tremendous because
of collectors’ attraction to Blume’s
realism qualities. “In a world that
doesn’t always make sense, there’s a real
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Peter Blume (1906-1992), Study for Boulders of Avila, 1971-75. Oil on canvas, 49 x 73 in.
Peter Blume (1906-1992), Untitled (Seagulls Flocking on Rocks), 1954.
Ink on paper, 4¼ x 5½ in.
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need to view things that are tangible.
We’re hearing from collectors there’s a
real sense of wanting to relate to what
they look at. Many people collect
because it reflects their experience,
and that’s comforting in a world that is
chaotic with strife and edginess.”
While Blume depicted familiar
scenes, such as the ocean in his 1954
ink on paper Untitled (Seagulls Flocking
on Rocks), he made his pieces distinct
through the use of color and simple
lines, as well as by adding fantastical
touches to some that garnered some
of his art the designation of “magical
realism.” His oil on canvas Study for
Crashing Surf depicts just that—waves
rolling up on rocks and sand—but
the unbelievably bright blue water
features bold ripples, and the rocks are
perfectly smooth and unblemished.
In each of his pieces, Cozzolino says,
Blume strove to get viewers to dig deeper
Peter Blume (1906-1992), Study for Crashing Surf
Surf, 1989. Oil on canvas, 20 x 50 in.
Peter Blume (1906-1992), Reclining Nude. Bronze, 9½ x 51 x 12 in.
Images courtesy ACA Galleries New York.
underneath the surface subject matter.
“He made politically-engaged
art, art about the psychological states
we experience, and made realism
‘conceptual,’” Cozzolino says. “What he
meant by that is he took renderings he
made from experiences in many different
places and times, and mixed them in to
a painting to seem like one contiguous
whole. He said he used imagery and
ideas as someone else might use color
and shape in an abstraction.”
Cozzolino says he’s excited Blume’s
work is being reintroduced on a mass
scale because the artist is “ready for
rediscovery,” as he “was right there at
the beginning of shaping Americans’
consciousness of what subjects and styles
could be modern and of what modern
art was.”
For those interested in American
fine art, Blume was a trailblazer for
multiple generations, says Jeffrey Bergen,
chairman of ACA Galleries.
“Blume’s iconoclastic nature and
fertile imagination produced
a singular, muscular body
of work worthy of public
reappraisal,” Bergen says.
And it just might inspire the
same fascination Cozzolino felt decades
ago in today’s crop of art lovers.
GALLERY PREVIEW: NEW YORK, NY
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