Curt Opliger

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  print November 1964

  John Hultberg

  Until very recently it was possible to view the paintings of John Hultberg with the distinct hope that he would never tire of depicting the dream-like ice-floes agitated by jams which erupt jagged flat planes into glowering skies. At least until we had tired of them, which at the time seemed unlikely. A change has taken place, and in view of former adulation of the artist’s vision, it is difficult not to be bitter and a little belligerent at his indifference. This is not to say, however, that the change is not for the better; it is merely that it took place before satiation had set in.

  The new

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  print November 1964

  Group Show

  The distinguishing note in this assortment of paintings and sculptures by regular gallery artists including Hill, Bloom, Frank, Strick, Beamish, Nakayana and others, was the Coast introduction to Leo Bukzin who recently returned to the United States after spending 17 years in France. The artist brought with him a bright, strenuous palette judiciously employed in blocking out pleasant landscapes and still-lifes that are a bouquet to the eye. The six works on view all demonstrated a capable straight forward style devoid of tricks and theatrics, implying a mature talent at work.

  —Curt Opliger

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  print November 1964

  “Israeli and American Artists”

  This hodge-podge of prints and paintings was rigid summer fare. The selection of pictures from Israel were dry, unimaginative imports and barely deserved the ocean voyage. These simple, lightly decorative and very dull works were only mildly relieved by a group of American prints including works by Ernest Lacy and Charles White, have been seen regularly.

  —Curt Opliger

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  print September 1964

  Connor Everts

  The day following the opening of the Connor Everts exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints, “Studies in Desperation,” the Zora Gallery was visited by five law enforcement officers who requested the removal of three “offensive” works in the window, and thirteen others on view in the gallery. This action was prompted by a so-called “deluge of protests received at headquarters.” The gallery complied but later, after consultation with attorneys, the pictures were restored to the walls but only after issuing a bulletin to the invaders that this was going to be done. The gallery was in turn warned

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  print September 1964

  Vernon Mona Lisa

  Nothing delights the man on the street quite so much as being witness to dissension between the high and the mighty even though it might involve their own personal security. Public interest in the presentation of the Vernon Mona Lisa at the Otis Art Institute was assured before the doors opened, for this painting, while not on public view for over four and a half centuries, has been the’ subject of much international debate, recently rekindled when Life magazine featured a story about its imminent public exposure in Los Angeles.

  Officials connected with the institution were quick to establish

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  print September 1964

  Beverly Green

  Impressive sales records notwithstanding, the oil and watercolor sketches by Oregon-born Beverly Green demonstrate only the most familiar kind of abstract expressionism. Though she manages to introduce a pronounced awareness of color harmonics, this welcome aspect is belittled by a limited inventory of forms which she has seen fit to borrow from the flora of both sea and land. The interpretations, or “essences” as she prefers to call them, are each refined to the same degree of concentration, and in so doing all individuality of the originals has evaporated, leaving routine expressions with only

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  print May 1964

  Jacob Landau

  The coincidence of the premiere West Coast showing of the prints, drawings and paintings of Jacob Landau with the opening of Zora Gallery’s new quarters on La Cienega proved to be an exhibition block-buster. Easterner Jacob Landau employs an incongruous prismatic palette while depicting the staggering tumult of mankind’s less commendable activities. The bright rainbow hues enhance the most disturbing performances and set one’s esthetic teeth on edge. The sense of drama is both compelling and repelling. The heavily populated conceptions embody the most corrupt and violent things man is capable

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  print May 1964

  George Baker

  The changes that have evolved in Baker’s work since his initial showing at Landau Gallery in 1960 are of primary importance. The carefully composed metal structures have been endowed with a jewel-like richness of surface––polished refinements in brass, bronze, copper and aluminum. Baker has sensed and enlarged on the royal elegance and grace of art nouveau but has ignored the tiresome extraneous activity associated with that movement. The highly reflective surfaces employed here rely as heavily on the mirrored space for their aerial quality as they do their own undulating forms.

  While never

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  print May 1964

  Moses Soyer

  The paintings included in this display arrive as a mild surprise since the name of Moses Soyer has been associated with the banal illustrative style appropriate to the New York figure painters of the thirties and forties. In recent years Soyer’s work has taken on a much more textural and poetic surfacing. The newly manifested freedom of his brush stroke has initiated both intimacy and vibrancy. Though the loss of his former precision has added drama, it is, unfortunately, still only skin deep.

  In spite of the maturity of execution now in evidence, Soyer only occasionally penetrates to where he

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  print May 1964

  Shiro Ikegawa

  The three one-man shows dedicated to the work of Japanese-born Shiro lkegawa at the Comara Gallery since 1961 have proven to be successively more impressive. The most recent exposure of work from the presses of the thirty-four year old artist would seem to suggest that the intaglio processes have reached some kind of ultimatum in his hands. Surely physical textures in printing have rarely been put to such extremes and the stresses placed upon the papers receiving the image must be nearly unendurable. However awesome these productions may be from a technical aspect, they do not obliterate the

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  print May 1964

  Lorser Feitelson

  Veteran performer Lorser Feitelson has introduced a note of gracefulness to his hard-edge compositions which seems to demonstrate even further refinement than one might have thought possible. Take a solid panel of color—red, green, yellow, etc.—and bisect with one or more flowing lines of uniform width, insert a visible or implied accent of drama with a near-impact of the lines, and you have a fairly clear image of Feitelson’s new series.

  The construction of these clinically sterile exercises requires the mathema­tical precision of an acutely tuned eye, so much so that the gallery visitor finds

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  print April 1964

  Karl Kanol

  The exhibition of recent canvases by veteran painter Karl Kanol at the Silvan Simone Gallery inspired disappointment. The enormously impressive background of this artist would predicate works of equal stature, but for some reason it does not. The greater portion of the pictures concentrate on the Mexican landscape and populace but does justice to neither. If it were possible to mix Kokoschka (omitting the sensitive and sweeping color harmonics), with the peasantries of a Chagall (withhold the wit and romance), and stir in a Soutine (without the potent brush), you might come up with something