Little is Said, but Much is Heard: The Paintings of Oscar Bluemner and Harry Sonntag
September 8 – December 5
Location: Oscar Bluemner Gallery, Hand Art Center
Curated by Gary Monroe, this exhibit features artworks by Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938) from the Vera Bluemner Kouba Collection and Harry Sonntag (1900-1991) from the Walker Collection of Florida Self-Taught Art.
Reception: September 10, 6-8 pm
Curator’s Talk: October 6, 5-6 pm
Exhibit sponsored by the Walker Collection of Florida Self-Taught Art
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938) and Harry Sonntag (1900-1991) shared little public acclaim during their lifetimes, yet both were modernists of uncommon intensity. Each received formal artistic training only to rebel against its constraints. Each painted places deeply personal to them: Sonntag conjured the drifting dreamscapes of Key Largo in the Florida Keys, while Bluemner rendered the charged geometry of the Tri-State area. Both were extraordinary colorists, abstracting their worlds in radically different ways. Bluemner constructed richly hued, near-geometric compositions, whereas Sonntag’s watercolors dissolved into atmospheric reverie—the contrast between the pressures of urban modernity and the languid rhythms of tropical life.
Their lives also bore striking similarities. Both struggled financially, lived with profound dissatisfaction, and died with far less recognition than their work arguably deserved. Sonntag was dubbed “the Hermit Artist of Key Largo,” while Bluemner moved within the high-art circle surrounding Alfred Stieglitz, without the sustained attention granted to many of his contemporaries. Admirers of both artists might argue that each transformed personal discontent into artistic vision.
Bluemner emigrated to the United States after studying painting and architecture in Berlin. Dissatisfied with architecture, he ultimately became a fulltime artist, exploring color and abstraction within urban spaces and the rapidly changing rural scenes of the Northeast. After attending Pratt Institute in New York City, Sonntag likewise altered his initial path. He rejected institutional expectations of what an artist should become and drifted southward toward Key Largo, as though the Florida Keys marked the end of both geography and convention.
The trajectory that sparked this less-than obvious pairing was inspired by recent Bluemner pairings by Dr. Katya Kudryavtseva, Curator of the Vera Bluemner Kouba Collection, and Dr. Natália Marques da Silva, director of the Hand Art Center—which featured contemporary artists like Mario Saponaro, Luca Molnar, Amy Vigilante and Jay Henderson. My own pairing is less of a dialog, and not a response. In pairing the Vera Bluemner Kouba Collection and the Walker Collection of Florida Self-Taught Art, my exhibit asks only that, after this scant introduction, viewers look at each painting without judgment to experience whatever it elicits for them.
Gary Monroe, Curator
Exhibit Credits
Gary Monroe, Curator
Jonathan Critcher, Designer
Exhibit sponsored by the Walker Collection of Florida Self-Taught Art
Notes of gratitude: Many thanks to Lance Walker for loaning the Sonntag paintings for this exhibition and for his generous support of arts institutions, especially those presenting self-taught Florida art, and to Stetson University Hand Art Center for championing Oscar Bluemner’s art as part of a national dialogue about this significant modernist. My personal thanks to Dr. Silva for leading The Hand, Stetson, its students, and our community—with ripples far and wide—in a fresh, challenging direction.
