Boulders of Avila

Artist Peter Blume (1906 - 1992)

Date1976

MediumOil on linen canvas

Dimensions49 1/8 x 73 in. (51 1/2 x 75 1/2 x 2 1/8 in. framed)

ClassificationsOil Painting

Credit LineSpecial Projects Fund, Friends Purchase Fund, and Charles F. Smith Fund

Terms

Object number1982.22

Description"Boulders of Avila" is the monumental culmination of a series of works Blume had begun in the late 1960s that feature huge boulders and a couple enjoying a picnic in their midst. There is a strange unearthly quality to the painting that is typical of Blume's work. The artist's style has been described as an amalgamation of Realism, Precisionism, and Surrealism and his subject matter has been labeled purely imaginative. Boulders of Avila, however, is based not on fantasy but rather on Blume's travels in Spain.
In the late 1960s Blume and his wife, Ebie, traveled by car throughout Spain. Blume was captivated by the sweeping plateau surrounding the fortified medieval stronghold of Avila northwest of Madrid with its scattering of great boulders left by retreating glaciers. (1) In the various oil studies done before the final 1976 version, the images of the rocks grow larger and more threatening. The artist noted that "huge boulders are heaped about just as the receding glacier left them. Those boulders have been through something: an experience." (2)
On this memorable first visit to Avila in the spring, it suddenly snowed, to the complete surprise to the two travelers. This ominous change in the weather condition is captured in the purple-blue forbidding sky shown in the distance in "Boulders of Avila". The majority of the rocks are smooth and huge, as if ground down by the retreating glacier that randomly left them behind. The shape of the topmost rock at the left is reminiscent of the huge shattered rock in Blume's painting of 1948 entitled The Rock (1948; Art Institute of Chicago). "The Rock" took more than seven years to complete and shows a construction site in which the central object is the jagged rock that seems to represent the eternal forces of destruction that eventually effect us all. No doubt this monumental painting influenced later works, such as "Boulders of Avila", in which Blume depicts the resilience of the rocks even in the face of glaciers and other cataclysmic natural phenomena.
The surface texture of the "Boulders of Avila" is very thick. Blume mixed his paint with fine marble dust and applied it with a palette knife rather than a brush to add to the sculpted surface effect. The dense surfaces of the rocks resemble the rough meshed texture of the skin of a cantaloupe.
All Blume's compositions have an enigmatic quality that is the result of his inclusion of elements that were of particular visual or emotional significance to him. Thus the images are highly personal and challange the viewer's interpretive skills. Even if they are not easy to understand or explain, Blume's paintings offer incredible richness of design and are stimulating simply by virtue of their provocative imagery. Working in a highly original manner, oblivious to the constantly changing trends in contempory art, Blume dealt with such themes as the continuity and constant renewal of life and the important role gesture plays.

KK

Bibliography:
Dorothy C. Miller and Alfred H. Barr Jr., "American Realists and Magic Realists", exhib. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1943); Charles E. Buckley, "Peter Blume Paintings and Drawings in Retrospect", 1925-1964, exhib. cat. (Manchester, N.H.: Currier Gallery of Art, 1964); Greta Berman and Jeffery Wechsler, "Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960", exhib. cat.(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982); Frank Anderson Trapp, "Peter Blume" (New York: Rizzoli, 1987).

NOTES:
1. Blume's trip is chronicled in Trapp, "Peter Blume", p. 125.
2. "Peter Blume: 'From the Metamorphoses': Recent Paintings and Drawings", exhib. cat. (New York: Terry Dintenfass Gallery, 1980, unpag.

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