Along with fellow Boston artists Jack Levine and David Aronson, Hyman Bloom played a prominent role in the so-called Boston School of Expressionism that emerged after 1950. Differing from their New York School counterparts, these Boston artists embraced representational subjects, but rendered them with the slashing energy of Abstract Expressionism. Born in the village of Brunoviski, on the Latvian border with Lithuania, Bloom immigrated to America with his parents at the age of seven, settling in Boston. After studying with Harold Zimmerman and Denman Ross, he joined the Public Works of Art Project and later the easel painting division of the Federal Arts Project in Massachusetts. The artist's professional career had an auspicious beginning when his work (along with Aronson's and Levine's) was selected for inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States. Eight years later Bloom's work was among those included in the American exhibition at the Venice Biennial.
After a life-changing spiritual event in the late 1930s, Bloom turned his attention to transcendent subjects with strong mystical overtones. Beginning in the early 1940s his subjects are often filled with mystical iconography including depictions of Synagogues and other Jewish themes, Christmas trees, and chandeliers. The artist rendered these works with a frenetic brushstroke and an emphasis on color that dematerializes the objects, causing them to acquire a visionary quality. Beginning in the late 1950s Bloom spent approximately ten years concentrating on drawing and while he continued to depict themes familiar to him, he also introduced landscapes and subjects inspired by nature. As a teacher at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Bloom was central in the development and perpetuation of figurative expressionism by passing it on to his students. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Bloom continued to pursue themes of mystical, religious, and emotional qualities-all through the expressive use of color. Of his own painting, the artist said: "When a day's work has been successful, and you have a feeling of intensity and unity with the work, that's the work you want to keep."
