Vision in a Summer Night 1951

Albert Bloch made "Vision in a Summer Night," a painting that invites us into a realm where the veil between the seen and unseen thins. Born in 1882 into a Jewish family in St. Louis, Missouri, Bloch spent much of his career navigating questions of identity and belonging, themes that subtly permeate his dreamlike landscapes. The figures cloaked in white, gathered amidst the forest's edge, evoke both a sense of spiritual seeking and communal introspection. Are they mourners? Are they witnesses? Bloch’s association with the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter places him in a context of artists grappling with the anxieties of modernity and the search for transcendental experience. Yet, the personal dimension here seems undeniable. Bloch left Europe in 1921 as antisemitism surged, a fact that casts the subtle mood of longing and displacement into stark relief. Ultimately, this painting is about the quiet moments where we confront our own mortality and seek solace in the shared human experience.