Hyman Bloom: questions of life and death

Boston artist Hyman Bloom combined the physical and the spiritual on canvas. In his paintings of the 1940s and 1950s about the human body after death, autopsies, skeletal trees and archaeological excavations, he went under the surface of things, exploring the form and looking for meaning. Bloom, who devoted himself to figurative painting at the decisive moment of American art, when abstraction grew, used thick paint in precious colors to create exciting and beautiful works that challenge our notions of beauty and understanding of the true meaning of "still life."

«Hyman Bloom: questions of life and death»Includes more than 40 dramatic paintings and drawings from public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Addison American Art Gallery, which will review the artist’s career as well as his constant interest in the human body. Bloom's complex works are based on the artist’s Jewish faith, his interest in Eastern religions and his transcendental faith in rebirth. In the image of the "Female corpse, rear view" (1947), he depicts a decaying corpse with a palette of saturated colors. As he noted, in such images "the paradox of the heartbreaking and the beautiful can be combined."