Helen Lundeberg (1908-1999)
Untitled (Classic Landscape, March), 1973
acrylic on canvas
60 x 40 inches; 152.4 x 101.6 centimeters
LSFA# 10507
Helen Lundeberg / Lorser Feitelson and the Synergy of Hard Edge Abstraction
March 1 – May 10, 2014
In one of the art world’s rare ‘perfect marriages,’ painters Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson challenged, supported and championed each other’s work all the days of their lives.
Within four years of their initial meeting in 1930 (Lundeberg was Feitelson’s student), they envisioned an American response to the work of European surrealists with their Post-Surrealist manifesto. Lundeberg did the writing but both artists harnessed these ideas in their artwork, each creating a provocative and revelatory body of work. The careful assessment of classical composition that informed this body of work also nurtured the evolution of their identity as artists and their re-invention as Hard Edge painters.
Until the early 1950s, Lundeberg used blocks of subtle color to sculpt space for meticulously crafted figures or objects. Then, in 1950, the forms disappeared. Though they returned intermittently throughout her career, she began utilizing the nuance of her palette and the precision of her line to conjure locations as well as emotional narratives. Watery blue greens fall in bands through a moonlit window. Pears blush red in a pink landscape. Lines suggest earth but are tinged with an otherworldly lavender. Poetic conceits all, but rendered with hard edges and a keen eye.
In addition to his prodigious accomplishments as an artist, Feitelson was a highly esteemed teacher, life drawing being a specialty. From his earliest figurative paintings to the biomorphic forms in the late 1940s, Feitelson conveyed the weight of flesh within the composition’s dynamic. Thus, Feitelson’s transition from representational to abstract configurations features lines that carry the immediacy of life. Strong primary colors dominate his canvases and clean simple lines speak volumes.
The gallery is the exclusive representative of the estates of Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson.