Basic Info

Name: Richard Rosenblum
Country of Origin: US

Description

Richard Rosenblum was a sculptor and a collector of Asian art, known for his collection of Chinese scholars’ rocks, which has been called the finest in the world. The Rosenblum collection was seen in a popular exhibition organized in 1997 by the Asia Society in New York and the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, Mass.

Rosenblum also trained at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Cranbrook Academy. His sculptures combine human form with natural motifs: “the rocks influenced my sculpture immediately, and eventually changed my work completely. Part of their attraction was that they held a strange puzzle.” Rosenblum was inspired by the way the rocks suggest an infinite world within a discrete object. The Chinese scholars’ tradition of contemplating nature in order to connect to the divine and further their intellectual pursuits was inspiration for Rosenblum, whose sculptures often recalled cult deities and explored the mysticism of nature.

By the 1990s, Rosenblum began working computers, using digital photomontage to continue to explore themes of nature. Works by Rosenblum have been exhibited at the Columbus Museum of Art, the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. He passed away in February of 2000 at the age of 59.