Ronald Bladen was a Canadian-born American painter and sculptor. He was a representative of the style of Minimalism. He is mainly known for his large-scale sculptures.
Background
Bladen was born in Vancouver, Canada, on July 13, 1918. He was a son of Muriel Beatrice Tylecote and Kenneth Bladen. Ronald Bladen's mother was a student of the Sorbonne (present-day Paris-Sorbonne University) in Paris and was an activist of the suffragette movement.
Education
Ronald Bladen's family moved to the Washington state in 1922. They eventually returned to Canada and settled in Victoria British Columbia in 1932. Bladen became interested in art at a young age. When he was ten years old, Ronald Bladen started to draw intensively, producing copies of artworks by Picasso, Titian and Matisse. In 1937 the artist entered the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design) where he studied until 1939. The same year Bladen moved to San Francisco, where he became a student of the California School of Fine Arts (today known as San Francisco Art Institute).
At the beginning of the Second World War, Bladen was drafted and subsequently declared unfit for service. He was obliged to work as a ship's welder at the navy dockyards. This experience was invaluable to him. Using the skills he learned during that period of time the artist made a living as a toolmaker for many years.
In 1946 Ronald Bladen received a grant from the San Francisco Art Association and travelled to Tijuana, Mexico, New Orleans and New York. In 1955 he moved into a communal household with poet Michael McClure, and painter Al Held, who was his lifelong friend. Around this time he also became friends with the writers Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He moved to New York in 1956. Al Held introduced him to George Sugarman, Nicholas Krushenick and John Krushenick; together they founded the Brata Gallery in 1957.
The artist's paintings of the late 1950s marked a departure from his earlier romantic artworks. They were characterized by highly concentrated segments of colour set against monochromatic backgrounds. In 1960 he started to works at Al Held's studio, where he began to focus on producing collages of folded paper and large scale plywood relief paintings.
He exhibited his plywood paintings for the first time at the Brata Gallery and the Green Gallery in New York in 1962. The following year he created his first free-standing, coloured sculptures from plywood boards with metal struts. From this time on Ronald Bladen dedicated himself entirely to sculpture. He presented his first sculpture, White Z, at an exhibition in the Park Place Gallery in New York in 1964. During the show, he met Connie Reyes, who later became his companion and close friend.
In 1966 Bladen exhibited a tripartite work made in 1965, Three Elements, at the show, Primary Structures Younger American and British Artists, held in the Jewish Museum in New York. In 1967 Ronald Bladen was included in the Scale as Content exhibition which was organized at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. It brought together important sculptures by Ronald Bladen, Tony Smith, and Barnett Newman. Bladen showed his monumental sculpture, The X, during the show.
From 1967 Ronald Bladen started to receive a number of important public commissions. His works were represented in 1968 at documenta 4 in Kassel. Between 1974 and 1976 Bladen worked as a guest lecturer at Columbia University in New York. In 1976 he was appointed teacher at the Parsons School of Design, the post he held until 1978. Concurrently, he taught at the School of Visual Arts. During 1981-1982 he was an Artist in Residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, and from 1982 to 1983 as a guest lecturer at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Among his other important commissions were the following: The Cathedral Evening for the The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, New York, 1969, Vroom Sh-Sh-Sh for Buffalo, New York, 1974, Raiko I for Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, 1975, Kama Sutra for Central Park, New York, New York, 1978, Oracle’s Vision for Springfield, Ohio, Black Lightning for Seattle and the King Faisal University in Riyadh, and Sonar Tide for Peoria, Illinois, in 1983.
Bladen's artistic stance was influenced by European Constructivism, American Hard-Edge Painting, as well as such sculptors as David Smith and Isamu Noguchi.
Membership
Ronald Bladen received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1970, and the Mark Rothko Fellowship in 1975
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
,
United States
1970
Interests
Artists
Isamu Noguchi, David Smith
Connections
Ronald Bladen married Barbara Gross, an actress, in 1948. The couple separated in 1955.
Ronald Bladen: Sculpture
Robert Bladen: Sculpture is an essential volume on an artist who continues to influence a wide range of sculptors, from Richard Serra to Ursula von Rydingsvard.