Albert Bloch

American artist-innovator with a German-Jewish and Czech pedigree, who worked a long time in Germany.

He was an invited member of the exhibition of the art group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, Blue Rider) and the only American author associated with the European (Munich and Berlin) Expressionist movement of the early 20th century and the work of the famous German school Bauhaus. For many years (1923-1947), A. Bloch was a professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and influenced the development of the newest American fine arts.

Key ideas:

– During the first few years in Germany, Albert Bloch spent most of his time observing and sketching the night life of the poor neighborhoods in Munich, creating caricatures of artists and writers in German cafes. Paintings of the talented American man attracted the attention of Russian artist W. Kandinsky and German artist F. Mark with their high spirituality, rare boldness of lines and at the same time simplicity, close to primitivism.

– The paintings of Albert Bloch always retained the sense of a representative form – he did not reject the materiality of the depicted and wanted to “celebrate the poetry of mood” with the help of Expressionist techniques. Although this did not always sound in unison with the ideas of Der Blaue Reiter, Bloch’s works found their admirers in Munich, Berlin and other cities where the works of the community participants were shown.

– The artist, in addition to the scenes of life, had decorative figurative works that caused associations with the methods of Symbolism (weightless figures in a misty landscape). Nevertheless, the “gloomy storyteller” Albert Bloch finally followed the example of W. Kandinsky and moved on to more vigorous compositions and bright colors, although, unlike Basil, he retained figurativeness in his art.

– A unique period in the artist’s work was the transition from the style of work in Germany to the style that he developed after returning to America. The picture “Summer” (1929) demonstrates this as accurately as possible: the left part of the composition is a still life with a bright yellow flower in a vase, and on the right one a woman and a clown are depicted in some quiet and mysterious interaction. “The author does not like the way the flower glows like the sun anymore,” one of the critics noted.

– In the film “March of the Clowns” (1941), Albert Bloch embodied his fantasy about the defeat of the Nazis in a gloomy comical manner, using the image of Hitler, who hangs on the swastika. Among the ephemeral atmosphere of swirling constellations, the endless procession of clowns seems ecstatic and sinister at the same time. Music, which has always played an integral role in the work of Bloch, is represented by a bassoon, which is called “the clown of an orchestra”. Later, isolated in Kansas, an idealistic artist filled the canvases with Christian themes that had inspired him since the time of his stay in Germany.