"Fusion-Sun," 1959, Copper and Glass Fusion, 9 3/4 x 11 x 10 inches
Claire Falkenstein - Intimate Relations presents rarely seen drawings, small sculpture and her highly prized jewelry. Transcending the traditional definition of the genre, Falkenstein’s jewelry was the subject of her 1961 solo exhibition at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs.
When Claire Falkenstein (b.1908, North Bend, Oregon - d.1997, Los Angeles) moved to Los Angeles in 1963, she had already achieved considerable critical recognition; not only in California, but in post-war Paris between 1950 and 1963.
In Paris, Falkenstein pushed the boundaries of sculpture and was at the core of the circle of international artists there as her studio was a conduit for artists ranging from Henry Moore to Sam Francis. She was soon recognized as one of the most daring... Click Here to Read More
Hans Burkhardt’s (1904–1994) expansive career and influence in L.A. are the focus of a survey exhibition of paintings and drawings titled Hans Burkhardt: Within & Beyond the Mainstream. The exhibition, as part of the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980, through December 24, 2011.
Arriving in L.A. in 1937, following his association with Arshile Gorky, whose studio he shared in New York from 1928-37, Burkhardt represented L.A.’s earliest and most critical link to the New York School. The exhibition juxtaposes Burkhardt’s work with contemporaneous reviews and rare archival documentation spanning more than six decades.
Included are important paintings shown in his first solo exhibition at the Stendahl Gallery, and his first museum exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1945, which the L.A. Times called an exhibition of “…dynamic power…a striking transfer of feeling into form.”
"Day & Night,"1937-38
oil on canvas, 42 x 52 inches
Installation detail at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
"Liberation of Paris," 1944
oil on canvas, 38 x 47 inches
"Untitled," 1953
oil on canvas, 31 x 36 inches
"La Brea Tar Pits (Burial of the County Museum)," 1975
oil on canvas, 77 x 114 inches
Following that museum exhibition, Burkhardt was both critically celebrated and “censored,” as his works proved controversial in the years leading up to the McCarthy Era, when modern artists in L.A. were seen as Communist threats. Particularly controversial were his anti-war paintings and Hollywood studio strike paintings, including his “indictment” of then, Screen Actor Guild head, Ronald Reagan. “Less incendiary” subjects also proved controversial, such as his Crucifixion Series – condemned for his use of red color and abstract style, regarded as subversive; examples of which are included in Hans Burkhardt: Within & Beyond the Mainstream.
Works of the 1950s onward were hugely influential to young artists emerging onto the scene. Artists ranging from Ed Kienholz, John Altoon and Karl Benjamin to Tony Berlant, Michael C. McMillen etc, were impacted by Burkhardt’s independent and provocative works, as he received extensive critical recognition. In the 1950s alone, Burkhardt had an impressive 23 solo exhibitions including a 10 year Retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, as well as museums in the U.S., Mexico and the Sao Paulo Biennale.
In the 1960s Burkhardt was the subject of museum retrospectives at San Diego Art Institute and San Diego Museum of Art and afforded a 30 year retrospective exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum, San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.
Also shown in the Rutberg exhibition are Burkhardt’s profound anti-war paintings of the 1960s and 70s, reacting to the Vietnam War, prompting art historian Donald Kuspit to cite: “Burkhardt is the master - indeed the inventor of the Abstract Memento Mori.” Throughout these years, Burkhardt taught at numerous schools; among them: USC, UCLA, Choinard, Otis, and CSUN where his influence was profound.
The reactive and prescient nature of Burkhardt’s work is evident in the exhibition, through the earliest anti-war subjects dating as early as 1938 through his final painting included in this exhibition dating 1993. His Graffiti Series of the early 1980s shows Burkhardt to have been among the earliest responses to graffiti art. In 1992 Hans Burkhardt received the American Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Hans Burkhardt was born in 1904 in Basel, Switzerland. He arrived in New York in 1924. When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1937, he represented the most critical link between L.A. and the New York School, as he was part of its genesis. Burkhardt lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1994.
Hans Burkhardt: Within & Beyond the Mainstream is part of the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980. This unprecedented collaboration brings together more than sixty cultural institutions and selected private galleries from across Southern California for six months to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Hans Burkhardt's career was the most expansive in L.A.'s history, spanning more than six decades, influencing generations of artists.
Hans Burkhardt: Within & Beyond the Mainstream through December 24, 2011 at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts located at 357 N. La Brea Avenue. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m., and Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Related educational programs will be announced in the future. The exhibition is presented with the support of Consulate General of Switzerland. The estate of Hans Burkhardt, The Hans G. & Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation, is exclusively represented by Jack Rutberg Fine Arts. For further information on the exhibition, educational programs please contact Jack Rutberg Fine Arts at Tel (323) 938-5222 or Email jrutberg@jackrutbergfinearts.com - Images available for press purposes -
Current Museum Exhibitions - Burkhardt
As part of the The J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, Hans Burkhardt works are featured in the following museum exhibitions:
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Artistic Evolution: Southern California Artists at The Natural History Museum, 1945-1963
Through January 15, 2012
Pacific Asia Museum 46 N. Los Robles: A History of The Pasadena Art Museum
November 18, 2011 - April 8, 2012
Los Angeles Municipal Gallery Civic Virtue: The Impact of the Los Angeles
Municipal Art Gallery
December 15, 2011 - February 12, 2012
Pasadena Museum of California Art L.A. Raw: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles, 1945-1980
January 22, 2012 - May 20, 2012
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California 1951-1969
February 11, 2012 - May 6, 2012
George Condo is among the most influential and provocative contemporary American artists on the international scene today.
This rare view of Condo’s works in Los Angeles reveals an intimate - and for many - a surprising aspect of Condo’s work, displaying a more distilled aesthetic, rooted through great draftsmanship and line. Condo is typically known for bold paintings so brash as to be referred to as Gonzo Artificial Realism. “Artificial Realism” is the term the artist uses to describe his works, which by turns are meditative, wry, irreverent and fantastical, reflecting Condo’s now-iconic surrealistic mash-up of old and modern masters.
In this exhibition, Condo merges, through a series of works entitled “More Sketches of Spain - for Miles Davis,” his admiration of Spanish masters along with his profound admiration for the music of Miles Davis, whose own jazz masterpiece album recording was entitled “Sketches of Spain.” In these works from 1991 - large-scale sheets and smaller works on paper executed in etching and aquatint - Condo employs an eloquent Picasso-like line with masterful draftsmanship and bravura, giving sly references to Picasso, Dali, Velázquez, etc. Miles Davis has also long been a source of inspiration in Condo’s works. One such example is Condo’s major painting in the Eli Broad collection entitled “Dancing to Miles” exhibited at the 1987 Whitney Biennial.
People Faces & Comments:
10 minute video at the
George Condo Opening
Also included here is an important early painting on canvas that was part of Condo's first solo exhibition, which was presented in Los Angeles from 1983, at the Ulrike Kantor Gallery, followed in quick succession by two shows in New York City that year, which catapulted Condo's career on the national scene.
Born in 1957, George Condo had early associations with other avant-garde artists of the eighties, such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as many of the avant-garde artists in Europe. His engagements with literary figures such as Allen Ginsberg are notable, as well as his collaborations with writers William Burroughs and David Means. Condo’s continued interest in music is underscored in varied ways, and took a provocative turn when he collaborated with rap star Kanye West, who commissioned Condo to create his “banned” cover for the recent chart-topping album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”.
His impact on popular culture has even extended to the realms of the world of fashion, as designer Adam Kimmel sourced Condo's life and artwork as inspiration for his fall/winter 2010 mensware collection. Condo’s impact upon artists of the last decade is particularly profound, as evidenced by his being the major influence of such significant contemporary painters as John Currin, Cecily Brown, Lisa Yuskavage, etc.
“George Condo: a collection of etchings” follows the recent retrospective exhibition, George Condo - Mental States at New York’s New Museum, labeled “sensational” by The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter. That major exhibition, organized by the Hayward Gallery, will travel to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (June 25–September 25, 2011); Hayward Gallery, London (October 18, 2011–January 15, 2012); and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (February 23–May 28, 2012).
In recent months, Condo has been featured in Art in America, Artnews, Art Forum, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker Magazine, Wall Street Journal - virtually every major international art publication and news journal.
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts proudly presents “George Condo: a collection of etchings” through September 3, in conjunction with a revolving large group exhibition of modern and contemporary paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture.
Jordi Alcaraz, Patrick Graham, Man Ray, Karel Appel, Conrad Marca-Relli, Ed Ruscha, Norman Bluhm, Roberto Matta, Ben, Shahn, Hans Burkhardt, Joan Miró, Frank Stella, George Condo, Ed Moses, Mark Tobey, Claire Falkenstein, Reuben Nakian, Ruth Weisberg, Sam Francis, George Nama, Jerome Witkin, Arshile Gorky, Pablo Picasso, Francisco Zúñiga
Gordon Wagner, “Construction,” 1950, 45 x 19 x 11 1/2 inches
Mark Tobey, “Untitled,” 12 ½ x 16 inches
“Some Assembly Required - Assemblage & Collage” features some of the most widely acknowledged contemporary and modern artists associated with the ascent of collage and assemblage. Assemblage and collage have been prevalent since the mid-twentieth century in virtually all aspects of contemporary art, ranging from painting to installation - from the figurative/narrative to the most ephemeral conceptual art.
Included in this exhibition of more than 50 works are artists most identified with these disciplines, including Joseph Cornell, Man Ray, Louise Nevelson, Romare Bearden, Hannelore Baron, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and others.
California artists are particularly evident in their commitment to assemblage and collage, especially since the 1950s and 60s with the emergence of those artists associated with the Beat Generation. Among those in the exhibition are such pioneering artists of assemblage as Gordon Wagner, whose early beach-combing finds and other found objects were combined in a manner that wed abstract expressionism with Wagner’s interest in surrealism; Wallace Berman, often cited as the leading influence of the Beat Generation artists; Bruce Conner; and George Herms, the most significant living artist associated with the Beats. Other California artists included in the exhibition are Hans Burkhardt, Llyn Foulkes, Ed Kienholz, and Betye Saar, who early on were particularly responsive to provocative social or political issues, as well as Terry Allen, Larry Bell, Tony Berlant, Claire Falkenstein, Michael McMillen, Ed Moses, Alexis Smith and others.
Among notable works in the exhibition are rare examples in the medium by Mark Tobey; an important early assemblage/painting by Ed Kienholz; a provocative construction entitled “Predator”, by Claire Falkenstein exhibited at the Whitney Museum in 1964; “Lang Vei” a 1968 painting by Hans Burkhardt employing actual human skulls, which art historians have cited as among the most important modern paintings on the subject of war; Irish contemporary painter Patrick Graham’s celebrated monumental constructed paintings; and evocative works by Jordi Alcaraz, whose recent critically acclaimed U.S. debut exhibition opened new dimensions in contemporary assemblage and collage.
“Some Assembly Required - Assemblage & Collage” opens on February 19, with a reception from 5:00 until 8 p.m.
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts is located at 357 N. La Brea Avenue. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m., and Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. For additional information on the exhibition, telephone (323) 938-5222 or email jrutberg@jackrutbergfinearts.com
Man Ray, "Untitled," oil on panel, 5 1/2 x 7 1/16 inches
