The first full-scale presentation of works from the Vera Bluemner Kouba Collection, an extraordinary collection of artworks by early American modernist painter Oscar Bluemner.

• The exhibition has been selected to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the collection, as well as the beauty and quality of the artworks. A 96-page, fully illustrated catalog will be for sale at the exhibition.
  
• Oscar Bluemner and American Modernism, a lecture series in conjunction with the exhibition, includes:
  
  • Gallery Talk, Roberta Smith Favis, exhibition curator, Jan. 30 - noon. Stetson University Duncan Gallery of Art, 132 E. Minnesota Ave.
    
  • Paradigm Shift: Bluemner's Colors, Adeline Julia, The Sorbonne, Paris - Feb. 5, 7:30 p.m. Stetson University duPont-Ball Library, Room 25-L, 134 E. Minnesota Ave.
    
  • Rethinking American Modernism, Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and director, Georgia O'Keeffe Research Center, Santa Fe, N.M. - Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m. Stetson University duPont-Ball Library, Room 25-L, 134 E. Minnesota Ave.
    
  • Identifying Oscar Bluemner, Jeffrey Hayes, professor of art history, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wis. - March 24, 7:30 p.m. Stetson University duPont-Ball Library, Room 25-L, 134 E. Minnesota Ave.

JANUARY 23 THROUGH MARCH 28, 2004. An opening reception is planned for January 23, from 6 to 8 p.m.

DUNCAN GALLERY OF ART, SAMPSON HALL, STETSON UNIVERSITY, 132 E. Minnesota Ave., DeLand, Fla.
Florida's oldest and one of its most prestigious universities, Stetson is located in Central Florida, between Daytona Beach and Orlando.

OSCAR BLUEMNER (1867-1938) came to the United States in 1892 from Germany, and first continued an architectural career begun in Germany. By the 1900s, under the influence of the modernist artistic circle of Alfred Stieglitz, he increasingly turned to drawing and painting, and gradually abandoned architecture. An extended trip to Europe spurred a dramatic modernization of his style. Back in the U.S., he took part in the Armory Show, the Forum Exhibition of 1916, the first Whitney Biennial, and had solo shows in Stieglitz-sponsored galleries and elsewhere in New York City. Although his work was well received by many critics, sales were poor, and he often lived in poverty. Anti-German sentiment prompted by World War I led him to relocate from New York City to New Jersey, where he repeatedly moved his family in search of cheap lodging. When his wife died in 1926, he went to live with his son in Braintree, Mass., and supported himself with assistance from the WPA arts project. In 1935, he was severely injured in an auto accident, and never resumed painting. His eyesight failing and in deep depression, he committed suicide three years later.

BLUEMNER PAINTED a distinctive terrain of farms, factories, and unkempt suburbs, which he described as "the intimate landscape of our common surroundings…the things and scenes most closely interwoven with the progress of life." His depictions of the industrial hinterlands of New Jersey and Massachusetts combined political and social sympathy for the workers who toiled there with the most modern artistic language. The characteristic touches of glowing red in his paintings and his interest in color theory earned him the nickname "The Vermillionaire." Strongly influenced by the Neo-Impressionists, he rejected their more scientific ideas in favor of more emotional and spiritual ideas about color. He once said, "I paint my attitude…I would be a composer, but being all retina, I saw it (his environment) all as color."

IN THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY, Bluemner's significance has been recognized in several important exhibitions and new publications, and a steady succession of his works has entered major museum collections. He is now widely acknowledged as a key player in the creation of American artistic modernism, taking a place in the pantheon alongside better-known colleagues such as Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin.

OSCAR BLUEMNER'S DAUGHTER, Vera Bluemner Kouba, bequeathed her extensive collection of more than 1,000 of her father's works to Stetson University in 1997. The legacy included works in varied media, from pencil and charcoal studies to major works in oil and watercolor, and from every period of his production.

KOUBA, WHO always felt her father had been overlooked in the art world, preserved these works in her modest home in DeLand, where she had retired with her husband, Rudolph Kouba, in the 1970s. Appropriately, since Oscar Bluemner was a strong advocate of the connection between music and the visual arts, the couple was drawn to Stetson through their love of music and enjoyment of School of Music concerts. Vera Kouba abandoned early aspirations as a concert pianist because of her family's failing financial circumstances. When her husband died in the early 1990s, Kouba looked for ways to preserve and enhance her father's legacy after she was gone. She chose Stetson's Duncan Gallery of Art as the depository for this important legacy. Before her 1997 death, she attended two small exhibitions of her father's work in Duncan Gallery and was honored with a memorial plaque.

FUTURE EXHIBITIONS at Stetson will highlight different aspects of the Vera Bluemner Kouba Collection. Stetson hopes eventually to build a study center to house the artworks and archival materials, and then to mount rotating exhibitions from the collection.

DR. ROBERTA SMITH FAVIS, professor of art history at Stetson, is the curator of the Vera Bluemner Kouba Collection. The "extraordinary quality and haunting beauty" of Bluemner's work "vividly affirm the central role he is increasingly accorded among the early modernists," she says. Dr. Favis, who undertook an extensive historical investigation of the artist and his work, has, with the help of colleagues, spent three years preparing for this exhibition.

DR. FAVIS EARNED a doctorate and master's in art history from the University of Pennsylvania after completing her undergraduate art history degree at Bryn Mawr College. Her most recent book, Martin Johnson Heade in Florida, was published this year by the University Press of Florida. She is the author of numerous catalog essays and articles, including "Painting 'the Red City:' Oscar Bluemner's Jersey Silkmills," (American Art, Spring 2003).