How Norman Bluhm Reinvented Gestural Abstraction

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How Norman Bluhm Reinvented Gestural Abstraction

I first visited Norman Bluhm’s studio in the late 1970s. There, I saw art spanning 30 years, from the late 1940s, when he lived in Paris on the GI Bill and briefly shared a studio with artist Sam Francis, to his most recent work. At that point, he had no New York dealer; his previous one, Martha Jackson, had died in 1974. Despite being championed by the esteemed curator Jim Harithas, and being the subject of exhibitions at the Everson Museum of …