Arondite

Born in Chicago in 1921, Norman Bluhm has garnered worldwide attention as an influential figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Originally trained as an architect under Mies van der Rohe, Bluhm has created a body of work that combines this strict sense of structure, balance, and composition along with taking inspiration from his Abstract Expressionist peers, such as Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis and Jackson Pollock. Starting out by showing at galleries such as Leo Castelli, Martha Jackson and Washburn, Bluhm was a fresh face on the New York art scene in the 1960s. Frank O’ Hara, a friend and collaborator of Bluhm, has stated of the artist, "Bluhm is the only artist working in the idiom of abstract-expressionism who has a spirit similar to that of Pollock, which is to say that he is out—beyond beauty, beyond composition, beyond the old-fashioned kind of pictorial ambition." (Frank O'Hara, 1962, as quoted in F. O'Hara, Standing Still and Walking in New York, 1983).

Bluhm’s masterful work Arondite is a large-scale canvas from 1963. Filled with energetic slashes and drips of paint, Arondite is a painting that envelops the viewer fully into its arresting atmosphere. Arondite belongs to a series of paintings all completed in the 1960s that were titled after famous and legendary swords. In Arondite, it is clear that Bluhm was beginning to experiment with a new style that combined abstraction with figurative elements, painterly looseness and delicate, almost calligraphic lines, demonstrating his mastery of this genre. This work was donated in 1993 to Vermont’s Bennington College and has resided in their collection ever since. Proceeds will directly benefit their new program, Art for Access, a dynamic philanthropic initiative that leverages the institution’s long and celebrated reputation in the visual arts while advancing its commitment to equity, diversity, and access.