Albert Bloch (Kansas / Missouri, 1882-1961)
ALBERT BLOCH (1882-1961) 1936 OIL ON CANVAS

ALBERT BLOCH (1882-1961) 1936 OIL ON CANVAS
Albert Bloch (Kansas / Missouri, 1882-1961)

Winter

1936

The oil on mounted canvas is signed and dated lower left front, and verso on the mount alongside the title Winter and inscription Lawrence. This work was exhibited at the Lawrence (Kansas) Art Center in 2015 and is displayed in the original artist's frame,

Winter is from the artist's second important second period where he developed his expressive Regionalist style, participating in exhibitions with John Steuart Curry, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood and Birger Sandzen. Earlier, as the only American member of The Blue Rider group in avant-garde Munich, Germany, paintings from his first period were shown alongside that of the important groundbreaking Modernists Franz Marc, Vasily Kandinsky and, later, Paul Klee. Please see the essay below.

Thank you to David Cateforis, KU Professor of Art History for the essay that follows, and to Scott Heffley, president of the Albert Bloch Foundation, who has confirmed for us that the frame this work is displayed in was made by Albert Bloch. He also confirms the medium of canvas mounted to Masonite is a Bloch trademark of the period, not a later alteration. Wearing his other hat as paintings conservator, Scott has confirmed the excellent condition of this painting and commented, ' Bloch uses white as a color to create electrified motion in the sky and landscape, much like Charles Burchfield did.'

ALBERT BLOCH.

b. 1882, Saint Louis, Missouri.

d. 1961, Lawrence, Kansas.


A significant figure in the history of 20th-century art in the American Midwest, Albert Bloch headed the Department of Drawing and Painting at the University of Kansas from 1923 to 1947. His main claim to art-historical fame, however, is as the only American artist to exhibit with the Munich-based expressionist group der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) in 1911 and 1912. Led by Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, the Blue Rider artists generally conceived of art as an elevated, spiritual calling - an attitude that Bloch embraced from the time of his association with the group.

Born and raised in Saint Louis, Bloch studied at the Saint Louis School of Fine Arts from 1898-1900 and started his career as an illustrator, cartoonist, and caricaturist, principally for the weekly Saint Louis magazine, The Mirror. He moved with his family to Munich in 1909 and continued to work as an illustrator for the next few years while he taught himself to paint by studying the Old Masters and modern French and German painting.

Bloch made the oil painting, Winter (1936), in Lawrence, Kansas, some fifteen years after his return to the United States from Germany. During his time in Germany (1909-19, 1920-21), Bloch had assimilated the aesthetic innovations of Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, and Cubism in his painting. He exhibited widely in Germany and had a retrospective in 1921 at New York's Daniel Gallery. However, after securing his teaching position in Kansas, Bloch largely withdrew from the art world, exhibiting only by invitation. He was content to draw and paint without pursuing sales because he viewed art as an elevated calling transcending the capitalist-driven materialism of modern American life.

Working in relative isolation in Lawrence, heedless of the fashionable trends in American art, Bloch in the 1930s developed a highly personal painting style of great expressive force using a palette of earth colors and cold blues overlaid with white. His study of older art and his observation of nature nourished his creativity, but he did not seek to reproduce what he saw; he worked from memory and imagination, enriched by visual discoveries made in the process of painting.

This is the case with Winter: it does not represent a specific landscape though it must have been partly inspired by Bloch's observations of the rural Midwest. The horizontal composition shows a hilly, snow-covered terrain with a few limbless trees and scrubby foliage scattered around two rutted paths that cross in the lower left center. The more steeply rising path leads the eye to a lonely red house flanked by evergreen trees on a hilltop at the upper right center. Passages of blue throughout the painting impart a chilly quality while agitated strokes of white in the sky suggest blustery winds. We may sense in the limbless trees an echo of the forests devastated by the fighting of World War I, which Bloch lived through in Germany. The vision of a cold, stark, comfortless landscape also resonates with the mood of the Great Depression, which hung like a pall over the United States in the mid-1930s. However, the alignment of the foremost tree trunk's right edge with the painting's vertical axis creates a sense of stability and, ultimately, endurance. After winter, spring will come - and with it, renewal.

David Cateforis.

Professor and Chair of Art History, The University of Kansas.

Board measures 17.25 x 27.5 with a framed size of 19.5 x 29.5 inches.

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Dimensions
Board measures 17.25 x 27.5 with a framed size of 19.5 x 29.5 inches.

Condition
Fine original condition. There are no issues of scratches, losses, repairs, in-painting or touch-up, as confirmed by Mr. Scott Heffley, former Senior Paintings Conservator with the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Provenance
The property of a private Midwest institution.