Helen Lundeberg
Seascape, 1962
oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches (152.4 x 127 cm)
CT-5278
Further images
Helen Lundeberg (1908-1999) was born in Chicago and graduated from Pasadena City College in 1930. She co-founded the movement Subjective Classicism, also known as Post Surrealism, before becoming an integral...
Helen Lundeberg (1908-1999) was born in Chicago and graduated from Pasadena City College in 1930. She co-founded the movement Subjective Classicism, also known as Post Surrealism, before becoming an integral part of the west coast abstract circle. Her attention to formal elements such as compositional balance and color connected her to a previous generation of abstract artists, including Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers. Lundeberg's reductive compositions, flat surfaces and spare compositions link her to contemporaries such as Ad Reinhardt, Ellsworth Kelly, and Agnes Martin. But unlike these other artists, Lundeberg's vision of abstraction remained loosely connected to the world around her. Dramatic landscapes and architectural vistas were composed of forms remembered, things "imagined rather than 'seen,'" as she stated later in life. Such images are distilled down to essential elements of line, color, and space, effecting a coherence of composition that borders on the sublime.
In 2016, The Laguna Art Museum presented a retrospective of Lundeberg’s work. She has also had solo exhibitions at The Fresno Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, University Art Museum in Santa Barbara, Long Beach Museum of Art, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Norton Simon Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Laguna Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Orange County Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, San Diego Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, Norton Museum of Art, Georgia Museum of Art, and Fresno Art Museum.
Seascape displays flat horizontal fields of cool blues, greens and lilac on a neutral ground. As suggested by the title and the colors, the painting evokes a marine panorama, one that is distinctly West Coast. Its sparse composition and level topography have clear counterparts in the vast California landscape, reinforcing the artist's connection to the space and light of her adopted home. In both form and content, the painting is a classic example of Lundeberg's work from this period.
In 2016, The Laguna Art Museum presented a retrospective of Lundeberg’s work. She has also had solo exhibitions at The Fresno Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, University Art Museum in Santa Barbara, Long Beach Museum of Art, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Norton Simon Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Laguna Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Orange County Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, San Diego Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, Norton Museum of Art, Georgia Museum of Art, and Fresno Art Museum.
Seascape displays flat horizontal fields of cool blues, greens and lilac on a neutral ground. As suggested by the title and the colors, the painting evokes a marine panorama, one that is distinctly West Coast. Its sparse composition and level topography have clear counterparts in the vast California landscape, reinforcing the artist's connection to the space and light of her adopted home. In both form and content, the painting is a classic example of Lundeberg's work from this period.
Provenance
The ArtistThe Feitelson/Lundeberg Art Foundation
Cristin Tierney Gallery
Private Collection
Exhibitions
University of Illinois, Urbana, Krannert Art Museum, Twelfth Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture, April 7-11, 1965 (illustrated).La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective Exhibition, December 10, 1971 - February 13, 1972, no. 41.
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective, January 16 - Februrary 18, 1979, pl. 26.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and University of California, Los Angeles, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 1980 - May 1981, p. 26, pl. 30.
Los Angeles, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Helen Lundeberg: by Land and by Sea, September 22 - November 7, 1987 (illustrated).
West Hollywood, Louis Stern Fine Arts, Helen Lundeberg and the Illusory Landscape: Five Decades of Painting, April 22 - August 28, 2004, pl. 22.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951-1969, February 11 - May 6, 2012.
New York, Cristin Tierney Gallery, Helen Lundeberg: Classic Attitude, November 3 - December 17, 2016.
Literature
M. Hagberg, “Poetic Mysteries,” Artweek, January 8, 1972, p. 1.J. Hugo, “Determination of Vision,” Artweek, February 3, 1979 (illustrated).
D. Moran, “Helen Lundeberg: The Sixties and the Seventies,” Art International, May 1979, p. 36 (illustrated).
E. Betts, Creative Seascape Paintings, New York, 1981 (illustrated).
S. Muchnic, Poetry Space Silence, Los Angeles, 2014, pl. 94.
I. S. Fort, Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective, Laguna Beach, 2016, p. 27 (illustrated).
D. Piepenbring, “Classic Attitude,” The Paris Review, November 14, 2016.
L. Rawley, “A Pioneering Female Artist Painted These Zen Landscapes,” New York Magazine, December 4, 2016.