Magical Space Forms: Stripes, 1954
oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches (152.4 x 127 cm)
Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Lorser Feitelson and the Invention of Hard Edge Painting 1945-1965. The exhibition has been extended through September 6.
Charismatic, inexhaustible and brilliantly talented, Lorser Feitelson (1898-1978) and his elegant provocative painting galvanized the Los Angeles art scene during his lifetime. Though born in Savannah, Georgia, raised in New York City and schooled in Paris, Feitelson became the true representative of the bare-knuckles New York-be-damned spirit of Southern California artists in the mid-twentieth century.
Art critic Jules Langsner coined the term “hard edge painting” in the late fifties. But by the mid forties Feitelson was already producing strongly outlined brilliant-hued geometric abstractions of representational forms. Impossibly serpentine black lines dance across smooth flat fields of sunshine yellow and spring green. Orange cubes with lavendar side panels seem to jut out of their midnight blue frame. Walls of fuschia carve arcs into a 60 x 60 inch black canvas. The piece’s neat surfaces, full colors and economy of form are vivid illustrations of the concept of “hard edge.” Though not the immediate cause of the term, Feitelson’s work seems a veritable essay on the nature of its creation.
The gallery represents the estate of Lorser Feitelson and this exhibition marks LSFA’s initial presentation of his work.