Abstraction x 3: June Harwood, Helen Lundeberg, and Anita Payro

Abstraction x 3 celebrates three mid-twentieth century painters whose distinct vision offers a window into the evocative possibilities of geometry in motion, with each artist’s work featuring provocative color combinations, strong graphic elements and unique linear rhythms.

June Harwood, a local treasure, has exhibited widely on the West Coast since the middle 60’s.  After completing her education on the East Coast, June came out west and made her name as a member of the group her husband art critic Jules Langsner dubbed ‘Hard Edge’ painters.  Her clear-eyed forms from the 60’s and 70’s pop or glide across the canvas in elegant sequences, as persuasive today as they were then.

Long time Angelino Helen Lundeberg was introduced to painting as a student in a local drawing class taught by her future husband, Lorser Feitelson.  Together, she and Feitelson founded the Post Surrealist movement, an American response to the compelling European Surrealist work of the 20’s and 30’s.  Ultimately, Lundeberg also became part of the ‘Hard Edge’ school.  However, she never parted company with her surrealist sensibilities.  Her extreme sensitivity to light infused colors evokes a distinct sense of time and place in each composition; a surrealist poet’s take on ‘hard edge’ painting.

Argentinean Anita Payro comes from a prominent literary and artistic family:  her father Roberto wrote for “La Nación de Buenos Aires” during WWI and her brother was a well-known art critic.  Schooled in Barcelona, Brussels and London, Payró became acquainted with Joaquin Torres Garcia and his ideas about geometry, structure and the meanings of mystical symbols made a lasting impression on the young artist.  Later in her career, the artist described her work as an attempt to “signify specific vital experiences; translate lived impressions, feelings and emotions and to illustrate through lines, space and color the impact that a sacred or profane text (made on her)”. 

The gallery represents Ms. Harwood and handles the estate of Ms. Lundeberg.  This exhibition marks Ms. Payró’s initial presentation with the gallery.