“Lorser Feitelson: Figure to Form” at Louis Stern Fine Arts is a small but insightful survey of the noted painter’s transition from Post-Surrealism to Hard-Edge Abstraction. Including nine paintings Feitelson (1888-1978) completed between 1945 and 1962, this show progresses sequentially backwards, with his later minimal abstractions of 1951-1962 leading to cubistic surrealism of 1945-1950. The exhibition concludes with Flight over New York at Twilight (1935-36, pictured above), a much earlier and more overtly representational masterwork recalling traditional Madonna and child painting with a surrealist twist. Manifesting the classical roots of Feitelson’s later phase deemed Abstract Classicism, echoes of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, Piero della Francesca and de Chirico reverberate through this highly stylized scene of a woman and child floating among manifolds of ambiguous space. Embedded in this painting’s surrealistic dreaminess, geometrized human anatomy and superfluent spheres and triangles betoken Feitelson’s growing interest in abstracting spatial configurations. Having seen Flight over New York at Twilight, you can almost synesthetically sense its levitation and overturned gravity in his later paintings. Retracing your steps, it becomes apparent how the anthropomorphic geometry of Magical Forms (1945) and Untitled, Magical Forms (1947) led to his abandonment of shading and horizon line. Untitled, Magical Forms (study) (1950) links surrealism to abstraction. Finally, forms are stripped to essence in juxtapositions of pure color. With stark expanses of violet enveloping cobalt, buttercup against cream, and aqua astride gray, Feitelson’s mature paintings posit arcane distillations of indefinite reality.


Louis Stern Fine Arts
9002 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Show runs through Apr. 21