Bloom (1913-) is a quiet master of American painting--his work has been shown extensively on the East coast, including shows at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art; and major examples of his work hang in most great American museums, including the Metropolitan. However, a combination of the artist's reactive reclusiveness and antipathy to the art market, and the art market's consistent and unerring preference for pretty, reassuring or fashionable imagery, have temporarily ensured his obscurity for the general public. Themes of man's inhumanity to man and the mystery of being itself, worked out in an expressionistic style glowing with rich color catching elusive, nearly abstract forms link Bloom to such European painters as Redon, Rouault, and Soutine. His figuration approaches (and reproaches) the so-called New York School of Abstract Expressionism of the late 40's and 50's while on the same ground of masterful paint handling, subconscious content, and affective color.