AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

“I have seldom felt misunderstood by critics, most of whom have recognized that my work is both lyrical and formal, and that these elements are inseparable and constant…”-Helen Lundeberg

As one of the founders of the American Post-Surrealist movement, Helen Lundeberg’s work is widely identified as poetic and lyrical. With a career in art that lasted more than five decades, her work transformed progressively over the years from objective subjects to more illusionistic, abstract forms of representation. Although she only obtained two years of formal art training, she managed to establish a reputation as a major American Artist by the time she was 30.

Her early work in the 1930s was greatly influenced by her teacher at the time, Lorser Feitelson, who had closely studied the methods of the Renaissance masters. As a result, the structure in Lundeberg’s work was carefully thought-out with the same technique that the old masters had employed. In fact, it was her skill in organizing the objects in her paintings without any awkward placement that immediately brought attention to her work. For instance, as The New York Times critic, Edward Alden Jewell once stated, “she handled her brush with cosmic authority” (Moran 24). From her earlier works, Lundeberg used a palette of cool subtle colors that not only instilled a sense of motionless and tranquility, but would later become a characteristic of her work.

Lundeberg’s earliest works were also precursors to the new art movement termed “Post-Surrealism” that she and Feitelson would come to initiate. Lundeberg and Feitelson had come to appreciate the “insistence on strange encounters between objects, the clarity with which chosen fragments of reality are represented, and the depiction of space” that Giorgio de Chirico, a European Surrealist, employed in his work (Anderson 183). Yet, they rejected the incongruity of narratives in Surrealist works. Instead, Lundeberg and Feitelson sought for a more classical approach to form and content that would make the viewer see a rational meaning within the work. In other words, they were interested in the symbolic aspects of Surrealism but disliked the unconscious and dreamlike aspects of the work that had no rational meaning.

In 1934, Lundeberg set out to write the manifesto for this new art movement which they initially termed, “New Classicism” but would later be called “Post-Surrealism.” Furthermore, along with other artists such as Grace Clements, Philip Guston, Lucien Labaudt, and Knud Merrild, Lundeberg was part of a new movement that was America’s first collaborative response to European Surrealism (Karlstrom 28-29).

Moreover, her work under the Post-Surrealism movement consisted of pictorial subjects that were strategically placed and that when connected, formed a symbolic theme. For example, in Plant and Animal Analogies (1934-35), Lundeberg depicts a female torso, a womb in cross-section, and a fetal brain, and blood vessels that symbolically allude to the cycle of life. One of her most celebrated oil paintings is Double Portrait of the Artist in Time (1935), which portrays the artist as a child in the foreground and as an adult in a portrait on the wall. Nonetheless, this painting is one example of Lundeberg’s refined brushstrokes that she employed in all of her works. Through her soft mechanical brushstrokes, she forces the viewer to focus on the content of the painting rather than on the brushwork (Moran).

In addition to her involvement in the Post-Surrealist art movement, Lundeberg produced several lithographs, easel paintings, and murals under the PWAP from 1936 to 1942. She used several mediums to create the murals including oil vignette and petrachrome. In the 1940s, her work turned a slightly different direction from the systematic aspects of her earlier works. Lundeberg began to move towards broader, reminiscent themes and was more concerned with rendering illusionistic space. As she stated, “Since about 1942 my work has been concerned, in varying modes of pictorial structure and various degrees of representation and abstraction, with the effort to embody, and to evoke, states of mind, moods, and emotions” (Moran 26).

Then during the 1950s, Lundeberg took it a step further and began to paint abstract forms that were non-objective. Lundeberg found herself more interested in the complexities of space rather than forms. As a result, her paintings during this period consisted of simple geometric forms with minimal color, in order to avoid distractions from the feeling of space that was Lundeberg’s primary aim.

The following decade, Lundeberg continued to use non-representational forms that were somewhat recognizable, yet were imaginary. Her work during this time consisted of 2-dimensional architectural forms that were set against illusionist landscapes. Most of the architectural forms in these paintings were arches but were not rendered from observation. In addition, she began to employ greater contrasts in color, mostly dark tones set next to the primed canvas. Moreover, the shift in colors was also due to her change in medium. Starting in 1965, Lundeberg began to use liquid acrylic paint that allowed her to depict “brighter and fresher colors” (Kahan 214). During this time, she also began to use masking tape as her drawing tool instead of charcoal or pencil since it allowed her to achieve a clean finish without any marks.

Nevertheless, during the 1970s, Lundeberg replaced the architectural forms in her work with pictorial objects. In an attempt to instill the “mood entity” which was part of the surrealist agenda, she painted small still-life landscapes that depicted simple objects such as fruits and shells in vast landscapes. In fact, her interest in illusionistic landscapes continued through the end of her career, as she once stated, “Now, in the 1980s, I find myself turning more and more to landscape, but my landscapes, as always, are invented, as are the architectural fragments that sometimes accompany them or frame them…” (Hopkins 95).

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

1949 Chaffey Community Art Association
1950, 1957 Los Angeles County Museum
1981 College Arts Association and Women’s Caucus for the Arts
1988 Palm Springs Desert Museum
1993 American Academy of Arts and Letters

Los Angeles Art Association

COLLECTIONS (SELECTED LIST)

Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN
Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, CA
Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles, CA
Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, Honolulu, HI
Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA
Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Security Pacific Corporation, Los Angeles, CA
Sheldon Memorial Art Museum, Lincoln, NE
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

CHRONOLOGY

1908 Born in Chicago, Illinois on June 24
1912 Family moves to Pasadena, CA
1925 Graduates from Pasadena High School
1927-30 Attends Pasadena Junior College
1930 Attends Stickney Memorial School of Art
1931 Submits and exhibits first figure painting
1934 Writes and publishes the manifesto for “Post-Surrealism”
1935 Paints and exhibits Double Portrait of the Artist in Time
1936 Completes two murals for PWAP
1949 Awarded first purchase prize for The Clouds
1950 Begins to paint abstract forms
1953 One-person retrospective at the Pasadena Art Institute, CA
1957 Awarded $400 prize for Selma at Los Angeles County Museum
1962 Participates in a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum in NY
1965 Switches to acrylics
1978 Her husband, Lorser Feitelson passes away
1981 Receives the Award at the College Arts Association in San Francisco
1988 Receives the Palm Springs Desert Museum’s Woman of the Year Award
1990 Receives an Honorary Doctorate Degree at Otis-Parsons College of Art
1999 Dies on April 19, in Los Angeles, CA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anderson, S. M. (1996). “Journey into the Sun: California Artists and Surrealism.” In Karlstrom, P. J. (Ed.), On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950(pp. 181-187). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2. Butterfield, J. (1983). Helen Lundeberg: a poet among Painters. [exhibition catalog] Place: Palm Springs Desert Museum in Palm Springs, CA.
3. Ehrlich, S. (1995). Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art 1934-1957. Los Angeles: UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center.
4. Hopkins, H.T. (1990). California Painters: New Work. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
5. Kahan, M.D. (1979). Art Inc.: American Paintings from Corporate Collections. Alabama: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and Brandywine Press.
6. Karlstrom, P.J. (1990). “Modernism in Southern California, 1920-1956: Reflections on the Art and the Times.” In Karlstrom, P.J., & Ehrlich, S. (Eds.), Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956 [exhibition catalog] (pp. 13-42). Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, CA.
7. Moran, D.D. (2004). Helen Lundeberg and the Illusionary Landscape, Five Decades of Painting. [exhibition catalog] Hollywood: Louis Stern Fine Arts in Hollywood, CA.