Helen Lundeberg
| Helen Lundeberg | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 24, 1908 Chicago, IL |
| Died | April 19, 1999 Los Angeles, CA |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Stickney Memorial School of Art |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Post Surrealism, Subjective Classicism, Hard-edge painting |
| Spouse(s) | Lorser Feitelson |
Helen Lundeberg (1908–1999) was a Southern Californian painter. Along with her husband Lorser Feitelson, she is credited with establishing the Post-Surrealist movement. Her artistic style changed over the course of her career, and has been described variously as Post-Surrealism, Hard-edge painting, and Subjective Classicism.
Helen Lundeberg was born in Chicago in on June 24, 1908, the eldest child of second-generation Swedish parents. In 1912 her family moved to Pasadena, California. As a child, she was an exceptional student and an avid reader. Her intellectual aptitude earned her inclusion in a Stanford University study for "brilliant children" in the Los Angeles area. During her early adulthood, Lundeberg's inclination was to become a writer.
In 1930, Lundeberg graduated from Pasadena Junior College. She enrolled in art classes at the Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena, where she met professor and fellow painter Lorser Feitelson. Feitelson's dynamic approach to composition and broad ranging interests in the international art scene inspired Lundeberg. In conversation with Fidel Danieli, as part of the UCLA Oral History Project in 1974, Lundeberg explained, "When Lorser came and began to explain things, to make diagrams and to give us principles of different kinds of construction – light dawned! It was really very exciting."
In the 1930s, Lundeberg was working in both the social realist and post-surrealist styles. She first exhibited at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego in 1931, when she showed her painting Apple Harvesters. In 1933 had her first solo show at the Stanley Rose Gallery in Los Angeles. She and Feitelson married that same year.
Together in 1934, Feitelson and Lundeberg founded Subjective Classicism (or New Classicism), which later became known as Post Surrealism. Using her painting Plant and Animal Analogies as a case study and an ideal, Lundeberg wrote the New Classicism manifesto. Post Surrealism represented the first concentrated response in the US to European Surrealism. Unlike their European counterparts, American Post-Surrealist artists did not rely on random dream imagery. Instead, carefully planned subjects were used to guide the viewer through the painting, gradually revealing a deeper meaning. This method of working appealed to Lundeberg's highly intellectual sensibilities and her engagement with surrealism is present, to varying degrees, in her work throughout the rest of her career.
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