Artist

Fritz Bultman

born New Orleans, LA 1919-died Provincetown, MA 1985

Biography: Born in New Orleans, lived mostly in New York City. Abstract Expressionist painter, later a sculptor, who won several awards; one of the "Irascibles."
Charles Sullivan, ed American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993)
: Luce Artist Biography
Fritz Bultman grew up in the privileged New Orleans home that later served as the setting for playwright Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer. The home's "fantastic garden," which Williams described as "more like a tropical jungle," inspired Bultman to use twisting organic forms in all his art. The sculptor was associated with the abstract expressionist movement after he started to exhibit work at New York's Kootz Gallery, one of the most important galleries of the early 1950s. In 1953, however, Bultman suffered a serious bout of depression and left the gallery. He remained anxious about showing his work and never became as famous as his peers. His friend the artist Robert Motherwell considered him "one of the most splendid, radiant and inspired [artists] of my generation, and of them all, the one drastically and shockingly underrated." (Kingsley, Fritz Bultman: A Retrospective, 1993)