32 Facts About Hyman Bloom

Hyman Bloom's work was influenced by his Jewish heritage and Eastern religions as well as by artists including Altdorfer, Grunewald, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Blake, Bresdin, Ensor and Soutine.

Hyman Bloom's work was selected for both the 1948 and 1950 Venice Biennale exhibitions and his 1954 retrospective traveled from Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art to the Albright Gallery and the de Young Museum before closing out at The Whitney Museum of American Art in 1955.

Hyman Bloom continued both drawing and painting until his death in 2009 at the age of 96.

Hyman Bloom was born into an orthodox Jewish family in the tiny Jewish village of Brunaviski in what is Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire.

Hyman Bloom was one of six children born to Joseph and Anna Melamed.

At a young age Hyman Bloom planned to become a rabbi, but his family could not find a suitable teacher.

Hyman Bloom attended the Boston High School of Commerce, which was near the museum.

Hyman Bloom took art classes at the West End Community Center, a settlement house.

When Hyman Bloom was fifteen, he and Levine began studying with a well-known Harvard art professor, Denman Ross, who rented a studio for the purpose and paid the boys a weekly stipend to enable them to continue their studies rather than take jobs to support their families.

Hyman Bloom hung William Blake prints on the walls of the settlement house, and encouraged students to synthesize images from multiple sources.

Hyman Bloom took Bloom and Levine on a field trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Bloom was impressed by the work of Rouault and Soutine and began experimenting with their expressive painting styles.

Hyman Bloom was a slow, methodical painter who liked to work on a piece, then set it aside for a while and come back to it with a fresh perspective.

Hyman Bloom shared a studio in the South End with Levine and another artist, Betty Chase.

Hyman Bloom first received national attention in 1942 when thirteen of his paintings were included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States, curated by Dorothy Miller.

Two were titled The Synagogue, another, Jew with the Torah; Hyman Bloom was actually criticized by one reviewer for including "stereotypical" Jewish images.

Hyman Bloom had two paintings titled The Christmas Tree, and another titled The Chandelier, both subjects he returned to repeatedly.

Hyman Bloom was associated at first with the growing Abstract Expressionist movement.

Hyman Bloom disliked self-promotion and never placed much value on critical acclaim.

Hyman Bloom was both repelled by and drawn to the sight of the decomposing bodies, and painted them, he explained later, in hopes of coming to terms with death.

Hyman Bloom believed that death was a metamorphosis from one form of life to another as the body was consumed by living organisms: a process for which resurrection can be seen as a metaphor.

Hyman Bloom began questioning his Jewish faith early in life, and painted rabbis, he claimed, because that was what he knew.

Hyman Bloom took an interest in Eastern mysticism and music long before the 1960s, when they became associated with youth culture in the West.

Hyman Bloom taught himself how to play the sitar, oud, and other instruments, and in 1960 helped James Rubin found the Pan Orient Arts Foundation, a group that organized concerts and collected recordings by Indian artists.

Hyman Bloom considered the artist a kind of channel, one whose reward was "ecstasy from contact with the unknown".

Hyman Bloom painted vibrant still lifes featuring colorful gourds and iridescent Art Nouveau pottery.

Hyman Bloom produced at least twenty paintings of rabbis between the mid-80s and 2008.

Hyman Bloom was a close friend of the composer Alan Hovhaness and the Greek mystic painter Hermon di Giovanno.

Hyman Bloom encouraged di Giovanno in his art, providing him with a set of pastels with which he executed his earliest paintings.

Hyman Bloom was married to Nina Bohlen from 1954 to 1961, and to Stella Caralis from 1978 until his death.

Hyman Bloom died there on August 26,2009, at the age of 96.

Hyman Bloom influenced many artists in the Boston area and elsewhere, and although he was largely indifferent to trends and movements, he is considered a key figure in the Boston Expressionist school.

Hyman Bloom's work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, the National Academy of Design, and many others.