The son and grandson of architects, Bluemner was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1867, and was encouraged to follow in his family’s trade. He showed early promise as an artist as well, and his first one-man show of portraits was held at the Berlin Latin School in 1886. In 1892 he won a medal at the Royal Academy of Design in Berlin where he studied painting and architecture. Dissatisfied with the restrictive aesthetic policies of Emperor Wilhelm II’s government, Bluemner left for America that same year.

Bluemner arrived in New York, then moved on to Chicago in 1893, hoping to gain architectural commissions at the World’s Columbian Exposition. He designed prefabricated units for the Exposition and freelanced as a draftsman. He returned to New York in 1901, and the following year he won a commission for the Bronx Borough Courthouse that his partner finagled away using Bluemner’s design. Although Bluemner sued and eventually won the lawsuit, the experience permanently turned him away from architecture. Between 1908 and 1910, Bluemner began painting in earnest, making sketching trips throughout New Jersey and Long Island. In 1910, the year he “kicked the building business over,” he met Alfred Stieglitz, who sparked his interest in the artistic innovations of the European and American avant-garde. Bluemner painted his first oil in 1911.

In 1912 Bluemner sailed for Europe, where he had a one-man show of landscapes at the Gurlitt Galleries in Berlin. After Berlin, he traveled to Paris and Italy where he saw the work of Matisse, Cézanne, and the Futurists, and created thousands of sketches inspired by the museums he visited. Stopping over in England, Bluemner toured Roger Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibition at Grafton Galleries and became fully committed to the modernist ideology.