Vern Blosum

“Fictitious” art entity Vern Blosum was notorious for shaking up the art world with his poignant Pop art output between 1961 and 1964. His earliest works, flowers reproduced from illustrations, were meant to mock the canon they so gracefully fit into. Parking meters, fire hydrants, and animals were rendered like graphic reproductions: stylized and simple. Blosum was featured in several important Pop art exhibitions before public realization that his name was an alias for an anonymous abstract artist seeking to deconstruct the system and undermine the glorification of advertisements and comics. The artist was focused on myth-making, “what it is to ‘fabricate’ a work, to construct an artist’s identity through painted surfaces, and to question it’s becoming through time.” He was represented by Leo Castelli and even exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until 1973 when he disappeared, but has apparently resurfaced in the 21st century.

Blosum has exhibited at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, among others.