Composition Red and Blue

Artist Albert Bloch (American, 1882 - 1961)

Date1926

MediumOil on canvas; mounted on Masonite

DimensionsUnframed: 39 1/4 x 33 1/2 inches (99.7 x 85.09 cm)
Framed: 45 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches (115.57 x 100.33 cm)

Credit LineGift of Dr. and Mrs. Eric Voth

Object number2004.22

SignedSigned with monogram right side

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionThis vertically oriented painting shows figures in an imaginative, colorful (mostly red and blue) landscape. Two nude female figures lounge near the center of the composition, while a clothed, male musician plays the flute in the upper right. Another male figure looks on in the upper left. A waterfall runs along the left hand margin. A yellow bird sits on a tree branch at the right.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

Albert Bloch believed art could offer a retreat from the materialism and corruption of the modern world and bring us “to a profounder [sic] feeling of our inextricable union with the Infinite.”

Composition Red and Blue presents Bloch’s tranquil, dream-like vision of such respite and union. Two nude people lounge near a waterfall accompanied by a bird, dog, and pair of clownlike figures, one of whom plays the flute. The repetition of bright colors and softly blurred forms enhances the scene’s otherworldly atmosphere and interconnectedness.

Published References

Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings by Albert Bloch, exh. cat.
(Chicago: Arts Club of Chicago, 1927), unpaginated (as Pastorale:
Red and Blue); Maria Schuchter, “Albert Bloch,” Ph.D. diss., Uni
versität Innsbruck, 1991, 66, 131; Frank Baron, Helmut Arntzen,
and David Cateforis, eds., Albert Bloch: Artistic and Literary Perspec
tives (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, in association with Max Kade Center
for German-American Studies, University of Kansas, 1997), 158;
Randall R. Griffey, “Bingham to Benton: The Midwest as Muse,”
American Art Review 17 (April 2005), 96, 101.

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