Boston Expressionism

also: Boston Figurative Expressionism

movement 1930s-1970s Boston, Massachusetts United States

Boston Expressionism arose in the 1930s among artists - many from immigrant and Jewish backgrounds - who fused the angst of German Expressionism with the techniques of the old masters, and flourished from the 1950s through the 1970s. Hyman Bloom and Jack Levine emerged from Boston's settlement-house art classes, while the German emigre Karl Zerbe, heading painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, brought Beckmann and Kokoschka to lecture and revived encaustic technique. Painting from memory and imagination rather than direct observation, the movement kept faith with the figure even as Abstract Expressionism rose in New York; de Kooning and Pollock judged Bloom 'the first Abstract Expressionist artist in America'. A second generation - David Aronson, Arthur Polonsky, Barbara Swan and others - extended its humanist art, and after long neglect the Danforth Museum's collection and Judith Bookbinder's scholarship restored attention.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Emotional directness, dark humor, and social or spiritual subject matter
  • Steadfast figuration - distorted, expressive bodies rather than abstraction
  • Bold color and painterly brushwork, with the paint itself carrying meaning
  • Conceptual over perceptual: scenes built from memory and imagination, not observation
  • Old-master craftsmanship and revived historical media (encaustic, silverpoint, glazes)

Key figures

  • Hyman Bloom (1913-2009) — Visionary figure and still-life painter called 'the first Abstract Expressionist in America' by his peers
  • Jack Levine (1915-2010) — Social satirist of politics and power, rendered with biting dark humor
  • Karl Zerbe (1903-1992) — German emigre who led the Museum School's painting department and brought European modernism to Boston
  • David Aronson (1923-2015) — Second-generation painter of religious and mythic subjects; later founded Boston University's fine art department

Example works

  • Christmas Tree — Hyman Bloom (1945)
  • Street Scene #2 — Jack Levine (1938)
  • The Last Supper — David Aronson (1944)

Sources

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