2022 Catalogue Archive

Trained as an artist in New York and Paris, Lorser Feitelson moved to Los Angeles in 1927, inspired by the surrealist works and early abstractions he saw during his studies. As a teacher and gallery owner, he played an important role in forming Los Angeles into an art center. As an artist, he and his wife Helen Lundeberg founded a Post-Surrealist movement. From the 1940-60s, Feitelson created a series of Hard Edge abstractions he called Magical Space Forms. Feitelson’s minimalist paintings from the 1960s and 70s make the most of simple variations in a line’s thickness, curvature, and color. In this elegant and immediately impactful work from 1964, the medium red lines meet their thinner black counterparts in dramatic fashion, with a moment of tension created by the gap between each pair. The organic looseness of the lines recalls the artist’s early years studying early 20^th century Surrealism. Feitelson’s work can be found in numerous collections, including the SFMoMA, San Francisco; LACMA, Los Angeles; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC;  and the Whitney Museum, New York.