Peter Blume (American, born Smarhoń, Russian Empire, now Belarus, 1906–1992)
Buoy
INV-1534
Peter Blume (American, born Smarhoń, Russian Empire, now Belarus, 1906–1992)1941
SurrealismModernismoil on canvaspainting
Date
1941
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
40.6 × 45.7 cm (16 × 18 1/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Marcia W. Dunbar-Soule Dobson in memory of Helen Flanders Dunbar, M.D.
As Peter Blume struggled with the commission for The Rock (also in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago) his health deteriorated and he traveled to Key West, Florida, during the winter of 1940 to recuperate. Buoy was one of three works he completed upon his return to Pennsylvania. Blume spoke of the buoys he viewed in Florida:
They’d put out these bright red balls, and inside of three or four weeks they’d be covered with . . . all sorts of odd growths . . . I watched them stripping this stuff off and getting to the red thing again . . . I saw these balls, great big buoys, as a form of the earth and the laceration down to the red thing as a sort of bleeding world going on.
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