Portrait of a Boy in a White Shirt (Self-Portrait)

The painter Hyman Bloom was born in Latvia and immigrated to Boston with his parents when he was seven. His talent was recognized early, and he entered Harvard on a scholarship, along with his friend Jack Levine. He painted in a highly emotional, figurative style, and his later work was permeated with occult and mystical concerns. After World War II and the Holocaust, he turned to explicitly Jewish themes.