Oscar Bluemner

Bluemner came to the US from Germany in 1892, hoping to make his living as an architect; however, within a few years of meeting photographer Alfred Steiglitz, he became a regular at the 291 gallery and a frequent contributor to Steiglitz's journal, Camera Work. This small but powerful watercolor sketch for a painting not yet located is dominated by the color red. Bluemner's choice of colors was never spontaneous, although these rich, bleeding marks might suggest it. Careful study of 19th-century color theorists, combined with exploration of the Eastern spiritualists, led him to his own highly developed hybrid hierarchy of color symbolism. Within that structure, red was the most potent of colors, and Bluemner felt it should be used in every painting. For him, it represented vitality, energy, life, passion, struggle, and rage. It is no wonder that Bluemner had become known as the "vermillionaire" by the 1920s.