Alex Couwenberg: Waimea, Royale Projects, Indian Wells, CA

royale-couwenberg

November 28, 2009 – January 2, 2010 Alex Couwenberg, who was honored with the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2007, continues to expand his visual lexicon in a solo exhibition of new work at Royale Projects. The Los Angeles Times recently described his paintings as “sleek, multilayered, spatially sophisticated compositions”, but these words barely scratch the meticulously finished surface. Comparisons to the renown Abstract Classicists of the midcentury are inevitable. This is in part [...]

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Frederick Hammersley (1919-2009): In Memoriam

hammersley-inmemoriam

    Frederick Hammersley, abstract painter, born in 1919, died peacefully  on Sunday, May 31, 2009 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the age of 90.   Hammersley is known as one of the Los Angeles-based “Abstract  Classicists” whose work gained international attention through the  exhibition Four Abstract Classicists at the Los Angeles County Museum  in 1959.  The term “hard edge” was coined at the time to describe the  geometric, abstract paintings by Hammersley, Karl Benjamin, Lorser  Feitelson and John McLaughlin.   Hammersley attended [...]

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Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, Orange County Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, CA

  Julius Shulman, Photograph of Case Study House #22  (Pierre Koenig, architect, Los Angeles, 1959–60), 1960 October 7, 2007 — January 6, 2008 Birth of the Cool examines the broad cultural zeitgeist of “cool” that influenced the visual arts, graphic and decorative arts, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The widespread influences of such midcentury architects and designers as Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, John Lautner, and [...]

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