Ronald Bladen (July 13, 1918 – February 3, 1988) was a Canadian-born American painter and sculptor. He is particularly known for his large-scale sculptures.[1] His artistic stance, was influenced by EuropeanConstructivism, AmericanHard-Edge Painting, and sculptors such asIsamu Noguchi andDavid Smith.[2] Bladen in turn had stimulating effect on a circle of younger artists includingCarl Andre,Donald Judd,Sol LeWitt and others, who repeatedly referred to him as one of the 'father figures' ofMinimal Art.[3]
Charles Ronald Wells Bladen was born on July 13, 1918, to Muriel Beatrice Tylecote and Kenneth Bladen, both British immigrants living inVancouver, Canada.[4] In 1922 the family moved to the Washington state before returning to Canada to live in Victoria, British Columbia in 1932.[5] The artist displayed his love of art at a young age. At ten years old Bladen began drawing intensively, making copies of works byTitian,Picasso andMatisse. In 1937 the artist enrolled in theVancouver School of Art where he studied until 1939.[6]
In 1939 the artist moved to San Francisco, where he enrolled in theCalifornia School of Fine Arts.[7] In 1941, when drafted and subsequently declared unfit for service, the artist was obliged to work as a ship's welder at the navy dockyards.[8] Using the skills he learned in this capacity the artist supported him for years as a toolmaker.
In 1956, Bladen moved to New York, where he lived onHouston Street. ThroughAl Held he metGeorge Sugarman andNicholas Krushenick andJohn Krushenick, who together founded theBrata Gallery co-operative in 1957.The artist's paintings from this period mark a departure from his earlier romantic works.[11] They are defined by highly concentrated segments of color set against monochromatic backgrounds. In 1960, he took over Al Held's studio at 5 West 21st Street, where he began to focus on making collages of folded paper and large scale plywood relief paintings.[12] In 1962, he exhibited his plywood paintings for the first time at the Brata Gallery and theGreen Gallery[13] in New York. The following year he made his first free-standing, colored sculptures from plywood boards with metal struts. From this time on the artist dedicated himself exclusively to sculpture.
In 1964, he showed his first sculpture,White Z, at an exhibition in thePark Place Gallery in New York where he befriended Connie Reyes, who later became his companion. He was awarded theNational Medal of Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts.[14] In 1965, Bladen participated in the critically acclaimedConcrete Expressionism show curated by criticIrving Sandler at New York University, which also featured the work of sculptorsGeorge Sugarman and David Weinrib and painters Al Held andKnox Martin.[15]In 1966, Bladen showed a tripartite work made the previous year,Three Elements, at the exhibition,Primary Structures Younger American and British Artists, in theJewish Museum in New York. A seminal moment in the history of sculpture, this exhibition brought the language of minimal sculpture into the public eye.[16] Artists represented in the exhibition includeCarl Andre,Dan Flavin,Donald Judd,Sol LeWitt,Walter De MariaRobert Morris and others.
In 1967 he was included in theScale as Content exhibition at theCorcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which brought together important sculptures by Bladen,Barnett Newman andTony Smith, he showed his monumental sculpture,The X.[17]
Starting in 1967 he received a number of important public commissions, was represented in 1968 atdocumenta 4 in Kassel, and was among the circle of artists presented to a European art public under the title,Minimal Art, West Berlin.[18] In 1970, he was awarded aJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
Starting in 1967 Ronald Bladen received a number of important public commissions including:The Cathedral Evening[21] for theGovernor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, New York,[22] 1969,Vroom Sh-Sh-Sh for Buffalo, New York, 1974,Raiko I for Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, 1975,Cosmic Seed for Des Moines (Iowa), 1977,Kama Sutra forCentral Park, New York, New York, 1978,Oracle’s Vision for Springfield, Ohio in 1981,[23]Black Lightning for Seattle[24] and the King Faisal University in Riyadh,Host of the Ellipse for Baltimore, Maryland, in 1981, andSonar Tide for Peoria, Illinois, in 1983.[25]
1956Paintings by Ronald Bladen, Fine Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC[26]
1965Concrete Expressionism, Loeb Student Center, New York University, New York, NY[27]
1966Primary Structures. Younger American and British Sculptors, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY[28]
1966–67 Annual Exhibition 1966, Contemporary American Sculpture and Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY[29]
1967Ronald Bladen: Sculpture, Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Bladen, Grosvenor, von Schlegell, Loeb Student Center, New York University, New York, NY
American Sculpture of the Sixties, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA,[30] traveling to Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA
Structural Art, American Federation of Art, New York, NY, traveling
Rejective Art, University of Omaha, Fine Arts Festival, Omaha, NE
Guggenheim International Exhibition, 1967: Sculpture from Twenty Nations, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY[31]
1967–68Scale as Content: Ronald Bladen, Barnett Newman, Tony Smith, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC[32]
1968 documenta 4, Kassel, GermanyMinimal Art (Andre, Bladen, Flavin, Grosvenor, Judd, LeWitt, Morris, Smith, Smithson, Steiner) Gmeentemuseum,[33] The Hague, The Netherlands, traveling to: Städtische Kunsthalle und Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Akademie der ssünste, Berlin Annual Exhibition[34]
1968,Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY[35]
196914 Sculptors: The Industrial Edge, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN[36]
1970American Sculpture, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
1972 Ronald Bladen and Allan d'Arcangelo, Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI[37]
1973 Biennial Exhibition: Contemporary American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Art in Space: Some Turning Points, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI[38]
1974Less is More: The Influence of the Bauhaus on American Art, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, traveling to the New York Cultural Center, New York, NY
1975 The Martha Jackson Collection at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Albright- Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY[39]
1976200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY[40]
The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants of America 1876-1976, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC[41]
1977 Project: New Urban Monuments, Akron Art Institute, Akron, OH[42]
1979The Minimal Tradition, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
Contemporary Sculpture: Selections from the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
1986Sculpture on the Wall, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
1991Ronald Bladen: Early and Late, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, traveling to Vancouver Art Museum, Vancouver, BC[43]
1995Ronald Bladen: Drawings and Sculptural Models, Weatherspoon Art Gallery,[44] The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, traveling to Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY
Beat Culture and the New America: 1950–1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, traveling to: The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; MH de Young Memorial Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
1996The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, Laguna Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA, traveling to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA[45]
Jenkins, Susan L. “Ronald Bladen.” In A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968. Ed. Anne Goldstein. Los Angeles, CA: The Museum of Contemporary Art & Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. 172-75, ill.
Sheets, Hilarie M. “Underrated Overrated: Which artists have been overlooked? And which have we been looking at too much?” ARTnews, January 2005, pp. 100–109, ill.
^Jacobi, Fritz (2007).Ronald Bladen, Sculpture, Works from the Marzona Collection. Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. p. 71.ISBN978-3-86560-214-5.
^Lippincott, Jonathan D. (2010).Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. p. 121.ISBN978-1-56898-934-1.
^Ronald Bladen, Sculpture. New York: Delano Greenidge Editions. 1998. p. 19.ISBN0-929445-03-1.
^Concrete Expressionism: An Exhibition of the Works of Ronald Bladen, Al Held, Knox Martin, George Sugarman and David Weinrib. New York University, Loeb Student Center. 1965.
^Sandler, Irving (2008).Ronald Bladen: Sculpture of the 1960s & 1970s. New York City: Jacobson Howard Gallery. p. 4.
^Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968 Annual Exhibition : Sculpture. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. 1968.
^Lippincott, Jonathan D. (2010).Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. p. 17.ISBN978-1-56898-934-1.
^Exhibition of University of Wisconsin-Madison Visiting Artists, Spring, 1972: Sculpture and Drawings by Bladen, Paintings by D'Arcangelo. Wisconsin: Elvehjem Art Center. 1972.
^Detroit Institute of Arts (1973).Art in Space: Some Turning Points. Detroit: Institute of Arts.
^The Martha Jackson Collection at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery November 21, 1975 – January 4, 1976 [exhibition]. [Buffalo]: The Gallery. 1975. p. 10.ISBN0914782045.
^McCabe, Cynthia J. (1976).The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants of America, 1876–1976. Indiana University: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976. pp. 105, 407.
^Doty, Robert M. (1977).Project New Urban Monuments. Akron Art Institute.
^Ronald Bladen, Sculpture. New York: Delano Greenidge Editions. 1998. p. 21.ISBN0-929445-03-1.
^Ronald Bladen: Drawings and Sculptural Models. North Carolina: Weatherspoon Art Gallery. 1996. p. 55.ISBN0-9627541-6-1.
^Report from San Francisco; Bay Area Bravura. Art in America. 1996. pp. 45–47.
^Der Verfremdete Raum-Skultpuren von Ronald Bladen un Fotos von Thomas Demond in der Bielefelder Kunsthalle. Herbst: Bielefeld Journal. 1998. pp. 32–33.
^"Ronald Bladen: S 2000".{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|url= (help)
.jpg)
