Lorser Feitelson Biography 1898-1978

Lorser Feitelson was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1898.  After the early foundation-years in New York and Paris, he came to Los Angeles in 1927, where he became highly influential as a leader and teacher in the art community.  Feitelson helped establish Los Angeles as the important art center it is today.

Recognized as the co-creator of Post-Surrealism in 1934 (with his wife Helen Lundeberg), Feitelson lead the way to a West Coast art scene that challenged the authority of both New York and Paris. In Post-Surrealism, the unconscious, dream inspired works of Surrealism was rejected and the artist focused instead upon conscious, carefully selected subjects pertaining to universal themes. 

His paintings evolved from the organic into the geometric, where he explored a remarkable series of abstract forms.  This period of Feitelson's work is known as Abstract Classicism where the imagery of the paintings maintained a profound sense of space and form associated with traditional Classicism.

As Feitelson continued to reduce the imagery of his paintings to focus just on the essentials, he ventured into Minimalism when his paintings consisted of sensuous lines set against backgrounds of flat color. 

 

In 1959, Lorser Feitelson was featured in the seminal exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: "Four Abstract Classicists" with Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersly, and John McLaughlin. In conjunction with this exhibition, critic and curator Jules Langsner coined the term, 'Hard-Edge Colorforms'.  Later the term "hard-edge" was popularized by Lawrence Alloway, who in 1966 wrote that "hard-edge" was meant ‘to refer to the new development that combined economy of form and neatness of surface with fullness of color, without continually raising memories of earlier geometric art'.

From the 1930s, artist, teacher, collector and television host, Lorser Feitelson took his place as a central figure of the art historical developments in Los Angeles. From co-founding Post-Surrealism to pioneering concepts of hard-edge colorform painting, Feitelson played a key role in the evolution of modernism in Los Angeles.