Judith Lindbloom
American, 1933 - 2016
Judith Lindbloom moved to New York City from Detroit on her 21st birthday with $10 in her pocket, drawn by the promise of freedom – she was openly gay – and the Bohemian atmosphere of the Greenwich Village jazz culture. She found work at Oxford University Press, where she befriended a young woman painter who had studied with Charles Pollock, Jackson Pollack’s eldest brother. In the mid-1950s, while attending a play with her friend, they looked at Franz Kline paintings displayed in the lobby. Lindbloom declared, “I could make paintings like these,” and without any formal art training, she began an active career in painting that stretched from the heyday of Abstract Expressionism until shortly before her death. She became friendly with Kline, and they spent considerable time in each other’s studios. Lindbloom was a fixture of art and jazz circles during that time, frequenting the fabled artists’ hangout the Cedar Tavern, where Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell gathered to drink and debate. She created numerous album covers for jazz artists Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins and Gil Evans. As a gay woman, she was always something of a outsider, and suffered from instability brought on by alcohol, substance abuse, and the suicide of her partner. In 1964, just before she was to be included in an important show at the Whitney, she suffered a breakdown, and did not paint for the next 16 years. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco and resumed painting, but continued to have gallery representation on the east coast.
