print Summer 1965

Tom Akawie

Mr. Akawie combines overtones of Pop and Hard Edge to produce cleanly designed canvases and graphics that play subtle colors and textures against definite lines and shape. The pictures he produces often jell into objects—but objects of two dimensions and of no world or existence except the artist’s. For instance, “San Vitale” could be a cross-section of some exotic or mystical motor, but it is not a motor that exists to run something, or even to run itself. The colors the artist employs are pale and subtle, giving the entire exhibition a silvery effect. “Michelangelo” in particular has beautiful,

print Summer 1965

Henrietta Berk

The first impression gained upon seeing Miss Berk’s work is one of extremely brilliant color. Then her affinities with the so-called “Bay Area Figurative” school come to the viewer’s mind. The color is the major aspect of her art which differentiates Miss Berk from the other Bay Area figurative painters; where their color is often cool and rather tinted, Miss Berk’s is deep, rich, and brilliant. A number of the works in the exhibition were so very loose in their drawing and paint application that they were difficult to read. Nor does Miss Berk seem to have mastered the art of using a line

print May 1965

Primitive Art of New Guinea

The Los Angeles County Museum of History and Science celebrated the loss of the Art division to its new building by installing a handsome exhibition of the primitive art of New Guinea. Such art is justly celebrated as being beautifully designed, expressive of the power of the unknown, the depiction of the essence of malevolence––all qualities that have fascinated many Western artists but which have rarely been expressed as well in other cultures. The New Guinea artists all have a sense of non-symmetrical design, expressed even in their symmetrical pieces, for in all cases, what appear to be

print May 1965

Jean Barlow

This exhibition marked the debut of Miss Barlow on the commercial gallery scene. It was selected from her recent Master’s exhibition at the University of California, Los Angeles. The exhibition was uneven, the varying quality between successful drawings and unsuccessful paintings so great that the show could almost have been by two different artists.

Miss Barlow has much work to do in the use of color; as it now stands, she uses color primarily for its position on the value scale, almost completely ignoring hue and chroma, nor has she mastered the special qualities of fluid paint. This division

print May 1965

Pacific Heritage

In this exhibition designed to present “a fruitful mingling of East and West,” Morris Graves and Mark Tobey were presented as “forerunners of the artists that make up the bulk of the exhibition.” Tobey’s “Burst of Spring, 1964” was by far the most impressive work in the exhibition; the other works of the two older men were representative (and effective) examples of their painting. The sculpture of George Tsutakawa, while in wood and bronze, gave the curious effect of being stone. Robert Bosworth paints watercolors that have a very Art Nouveau effect, controlled and lush at the same time, with

print May 1965

Gerd Koch

Mr. Koch is an artist who has been exhibiting in the southern California area for well over ten years, and during that time has garnered an impressive list of prizes, exhibitions, and sales. His subject matter has always been nature, primarily the Ojai countryside, treated in an individual manner. In earlier works, the development was rich and full, with the entire surface of the picture covered with thick paint, an expression that was boldly and completely on the picture plane.

Mr. Koch has just returned from a year or so spent in Europe, and the exhibition is the first here since 1962. The new

print May 1965

David Aronson

Since his last exhibition in this area (at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 1961), David Aronson has moved into a new medium, sculpture, and the current exhibition contained some of this new work, as well as paintings and drawings. The drawings and paintings were further developments of the work shown four years ago-strange, slightly distorted figures existing in a shallow space filled with a light almost as palpable as honey. The color range and the attitudes of the figures bring to mind some of the later works of Rembrandt, although they lack the compassion of Rembrandt’s depictions. Even when

print April 1965

Emerson Woelffer

An exhibition of the artist’s recent works, featuring his own personal vocabulary of handprints and “mirror” shapes––shapes which recall half-apples seen in silhouette. Only one work “Yellow Poem #2” lacked both; its dominant feature was a large, black, almost square shape nearly filling the canvas, its uneven edges defined on the sides and the bottom by dark brown areas, while its top was edged by a band of bright ochre. In the upper center of this shape, white, thickly textured paint became two adjoining squares. The black, functioning as a shape in itself and also as a background, provides

print April 1965

Joan Maffei

An artist of undoubted evocative power, Joan Maffei, a product of Long Beach State College and UCLA, was given her second one-man exhibition at this gallery. Miss Maffei creates a rather terrifying world. Her world of solid objects in almost garish colors is peopled with icons, not humans, and it faintly recalls the worlds given to us by some of the Mexican social realists of the 1930s, yet developed in an anti-classical manner. Such a work as “Portrait of Carlo” with its strange, dark, powerful figure, cramped into a space too shallow to contain it, gauntleted arms raised high to hold or catch

print April 1965

Old Master Prints from the National Gallery of Art

As a part of an educational program designed to create greater interest in prints, the Print Council of America asked Mr. Lessing J. Rosenwald, one of the nation’s outstanding collectors (and donor of the extensive and magnificent collection that bears his name to the National Gallery), to select fifty works by twenty artists from his donation for circulation to museums and galleries throughout the United States. Spanning the major print developments in Western art to the end of the 19th century, the exhibition is not only a fine introduction to the subject for the novice, but an excellent

print April 1965

Figure Today

There has been much talk about a return to the figure, but since the Los Angeles Art Association has a long tradition of at least one exhibition each year devoted to the contemporary figure painter, it could be said that the figure never really left the Association. The current exhibition is not the strongest of the recent Association exhibitions, but, as always, it is of interest to the viewer searching for works by artists not currently fashionable.

The most outstanding painting is Harry Carmean’s “untitled.” It represents a shift in his concepts; the long interest in the Renaissance is still

print April 1965

Thomas Cornell

This was a thoroughly delightful exhibition of skill and competence in the graphic field. Combining superb draftsmanship with psychological insight expressed through his medium, the artist gives us a series of portraits of classic figures from the literary and political world of 18th-century France, such as Voltaire and Robespierre. The air of antique charm that envelops these works is not false, but is engendered by the artist’s careful craftsmanship, while his concept of the subject is wholly acceptable to a modern viewer.

Mr. Cornell, born in 1937 and a graduate of Amherst, the Cleveland

H. J. Weeks