Bidspirit auction | Albert Bloch (Kansas / Missouri,

Albert Bloch (Kansas / Missouri, 1882-1961) - ALBERT BLOCH (1882-1961) THE SPANGLED MOTLEY - 1952. Albert Bloch (Kansas / Missouri, 1882-1961) The Spangled Motley 1952 Mosaic in a visual, structural and conceptual sense, this work by the pioneering American modernist Albert Bloch is signed lower left front; and further signed, titled and dated in the artist's hand verso near the inscription Lawrence. Painted during his time in Lawrence, Kansas, this work ranks among the finest examples of Bloch's late-period paintings to appear at auction. It relates closely to the groundbreaking avant-garde works he produced in Germany prior to World War I, paintings that decisively broke with academic convention and foreshadowed the shift toward abstraction, a movement that would ultimately reshape twentieth-century art. Special thanks to Dr. David Cateforis, Bloch scholar and professor of art history at the University of Kansas for the following essay: A splendid example of Albert Bloch's late work, Spangled Motley vividly manifests his lifelong fascination with clowns and figures from the commedia dell'arte , a form of popular theater that flourished in Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries and whose stock characters remain familiar today. Harlequin, the best-known of these figures, occupies the left side of the composition. Shown full-length from the back, he wears his signature tricorn hat, half-mask, and tight-fitting motley costume patterned with diamond shapes. He holds a batte , or slapstick-a hinged wooden device used to create a loud cracking sound and a comic prop Harlequin famously wielded. Harlequin turns toward a circus clown wearing a tall blue conical hat, a baggy white costume, and an oversized glove, who grins directly at the viewer with a heavily made-up face. A brown-and-black orb, possibly the moon, glows in the sky at upper right, while stylized plants fill the composition's margins. Bloch's liberal use of white, characteristically combined with blues and earth tones in his paintings from the 1930s onward, gives the entire scene a glittering, spangled effect. Working wholly from his imagination, Bloch conjured this abstracted fantasy through the act of painting itself, applying thick paint with a freedom and confidence gained through decades at the easel. The Saint Louis-born Bloch depicted clowns and commedia dell'arte figures from the outset of his career in Munich, aligning him with contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Georges Rouault, who also returned repeatedly to these subjects. All these modern artists used clowns to embody various states of feeling in a symbolic fashion removed from daily actuality. Harlequin appeared early in Bloch's art in one of the six canvases he exhibited in the first exhibition of der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) in 1911: Harlequinade , showing a leaping Harlequin surrounded by other clowns, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He continued to paint clowns during his later decades in Kansas, including March of the Clowns (1941, Jewish Museum, New York), a World War II-era image of a circus parade led by a clown hoisting an effigy of Hitler dangling from a maypole. Painted eleven years later, Spangled Motley is quieter and more introspective, imbued with the haunting, visionary quality that characterizes Bloch's late work, when his art reached its greatest expressive intensity. Dr. David Cateforis, February, 2026. In January 2026, Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum announced a major acquisition of over 300 artworks by Albert Bloch, the sole American member of the Der Blaue Reiter Group of Expressionist Painters in Germany, just before WWI. The museum underscored the significance of this acquisition, and the gap it will fill in understanding Bloch's importance, with the statement, '' This transformational acquisition will make the Busch-Reisinger Museum the center for the study of the artist.' Canvas measures 35 x 20 with a framed size of 43 x 27 x 3.5 inches. Without proof of exemption, be aware that internet sales tax applies to all Internet transactions and local sales tax may apply to local pick-up transactions. We happily provide seamless in-house packing and shipping services on nearly everything we sell. Until further notice, we cannot offer international shipping in-house. Dimensions Canvas measures 35 x 20 with a framed size of 43 x 27 x 3.5 inches. Condition Excellent original untouched condition. There are no issues of scratches, losses, repairs, in-painting or touch-up. Provenance Acquired directly from Albert Bloch by fellow Kansas artist John D. Gorbutt, Jr. and to the current owner by descent.