Oral history interview with Peter Blume, 1983 August 16-1984 May 23

Collection Information

Size: 195 Pages, Transcript

Format: Originally recorded on 10 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 20 digital wav files. Duration is 14 hr., 24 min.

Summary: An interview with Peter Blume conducted 1983 August 16-1984 May 23, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.

Blume discusses his training with the Soyer brothers; his precociously early exhibitions with Charles Daniel; Daniel's assistant, Alanson Hartpence; Alfred Stieglitz, Malcolm Cowley, and various figures of the bohemian art crowd of Greenwich Village in the 1920s; increasing compositional complexity and use of intense colors in the late 1920s; his working methods; renown brought by first prize (1934) in Carnegie International for the "South of Scranton"; patronage of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; his Guggenheim fellowship to Italy and germination of "The Eternal City" (1934-7), and its purchase in early 1940s by the Museum of Modern Art; purchases of his work by the Whitney and the Metropolitan museums; World War II army paintings; Post-World War II paintings, in particular, "The Rock" (1948), "Passage to Etna" (1956), "Tasso's Oak" (1960), and a series on the seasons (1964-1983); and his preparatory studies.

Biographical/Historical Note

Peter Blume (1906-1992) was a painter from Sherman, Connecticut.

Provenance

These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.

Language Note

English .

Funding

Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.