“Hyman Bloom was once prominent enough to be dubbed the “first Abstract Expressionist artist” by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. The artist, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, fell out of the limelight for a variety of reasons. Not least of these was his involvement with spiritual concerns.
His paintings present jewel-like surfaces that are engulfed by a struggle between light and darkness. The work is indebted to a moment of mystical illumination he experienced as a young man during a period of extreme isolation and financial hardship. As he described it, “I had a conviction of immortality, of being part of something permanent and ever-changing, of metamorphosis as the nature of being.”
His recent show at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, “Matters of Life and Death,” is centered on his paintings of cadavers, which, along with lushly painted near abstract representations of synagogues, rabbis, chandeliers, seances, and archaeological digs, were part of his exploration of the astral plane. This concept posits a state of being that exists between life and death and is informed by Bloom’s deep reading of theosophical texts, as well as his interest in mysticism, kabbalah, and other esoteric religions”
Hyman Bloom, [American, 1913–2009] Cadaver on Table, 1953, oil on canvas, 52 x 40 in. (132 x 102 cm) Henry Melville Fuller Fund, 2018.
https://currier.org/collection/hyman-bloom/
Eleanor Heartney, Spirituality Has Long Been Erased From Art History. Here’s Why It’s Having a Resurgence Today, ArtNet News, January 6, 2020.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/spirituality-and-art-resurgence-1737117
