Oscar Bluemner

Oscar Bluemner (1867–1938), Self-Portrait, 1933
Oil on panel, 19 3/4 × 14 3/4 in. Promised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas.

Oscar Bluemner immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1892 and was a successful architect and painter. He recorded his ideas for paintings in diaries he kept in German, English, and Latin. In his journals, this red, white, and blue self-portrait is referred to as “Florianus CMMXXXIII” to suggest flowering or blooming—a reference to his surname Bluemner—and dated it in roman numerals. Bluemner wanted people look broadly at his art “the way you would listen to music … Look at the space filled with colors and try to feel.”