Oscar Bluemner

Oscar Bluemner used colour the way an architect uses structure. His landscapes of New Jersey mill towns, rivers and small houses are built from flat, hard-edged shapes in intense reds, blues and greens, so that a plain street corner becomes a charged, almost musical composition.

Born in Prenzlau, Prussia, in 1867, he trained as an architect and emigrated to Chicago in 1893, moving to New York in 1901, where he designed the winning scheme for the Bronx Borough Courthouse. From 1910 he turned to painting, encouraged by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who gave him a solo show at his 291 gallery in 1915. He exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show and found real critical success only in the 1930s. Stetson University in Florida holds more than a thousand of his works.

In Evening Tones, Bronx River at Mount Vernon, look at how every shape is reduced to a clean, coloured plane.