Bathers #8, 1918-19
Oil on carton
16 x 20 inches
Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Lorser Feitelson: the Kinetic Series – Works from 1916-1923. The exhibition opens on Saturday, September 10, with a reception from 5-9 pm and continues through Saturday, December 23, 2005.
It is hard to imagine Lorser Feitelson (1898–1978) as being described in any way other than “kinetic.” Throughout his life long full-throttle pursuit of artistic expression, Feitelson digested and then incorporated schools, styles, training and trends with remarkable specificity and success. Even in these earliest works, executed between his 18th and 24th birthdays and preceded by a personal determination at age 15 to become a painter, Feitelson displays a mature technique, a passion for new visual ideas and a precocious understanding of his own artistic sensibilities.
The kinetic series strongly reflects Feitelson’s exposure to European Post-Impressionists (their Expressionist and Cubist works were first exhibited in New York and seen by Feitelson at the Armory’s International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1913). Working in oil, usually executed on carton or board, Feitelson re-interprets the figure drawing. Repeated lines capture not only the form itself but also the feeling of movement innate in the form. Black outlines are echoed in adjacent mauve lines then diffused with a mottled wash of earthy browns and greens. With meticulous attention to the fluid lines of the body, Feitelson’s figures seem to breathe and/or gesture. Even in the simplest oil pastel and pencil sketches, Feitelson manages to convey a Cubist sensibility within the context of a conventionally observed drawing and his model’s lusciously curving hip.
In surveying the elegant sensuality and vigor of this early work, Feitelson’s future as a celebrated instructor/practitioner of life drawing and an exemplar of miraculously fleshly-centric hard edge paintings seems predestined. Yet the greatest revelation of the brilliant accomplishment of this early work is the knowledge that the artist not only ‘lived up’ to his early promise, he surpassed it.
The gallery represents the estate of Lorser Feitelson and this exhibition marks LSFA’s second in a series of ongoing presentations of his work.