Museum
Peter Blume
American, 1906–1992
1932
A finely detailed pencil drawing in which Peter Blume arranges displaced architectural fragments, classical sculptures, and everyday visitors into a dreamlike museum tableau that collapses scale and time.
What hits you first is the uncanny clarity—measured shading and a checkerboard floor render a monumental Christ, a plunging Gothic tower, and small figures with equal photographic precision, making the impossible perspective feel eerily real.
Dating to 1932, this work shows Blume’s early fusion of precise draftsmanship and surreal juxtaposition, helping to define an American magic-realist approach that used uncanny combinations to examine history, memory, and modern life.
Medium
Pencil on paper
Dimensions
15 3/4 x 11" (40.0 x 27.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Accession
33.1935
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
