Noted for his surrealist- tinged figuration called 'magic realism', Peter Blume remained outside any clearly defined current of American art, and throughout his sixty year career rarely veered from the quirky narrative style he developed in his twenties. Born in Smorgon, Russia, Peter Blume's parents emigrated to the United States in 1911, and settled in Brooklyn, New York, around 1912. Blume's father worked in the clothing trade as a 'marker', laying out patterns on fabric.

Blume studied art from the age of 13 at evening classes, then at the Educational Alliance in the lower East Side of New York, where he learned about modern art and also met numerous artists. He then went on to study at the Beaux-Arts Ins...