Lorser Feitelson

Who was Lorser Feitelson?

Lorser Feitelson was born and raised in New York City but rose to prominence on the West Coast as one of the founding fathers of Southern California-based Hard Edge painting.

Lorser Feitelson's works, alongside those of along with his peers Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley and John McLaughlin, were featured in the landmark 1959 exhibition Four Abstract Classicists at the San Francisco Museum of Art and later traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Curated by Los Angeles based critic and curator Jules Langsner, the exhibition introduced the general public to the dazzling visual language created by a revolutionary group of painters. A revised version of this exhibition re-titled West Coast Hard Edge was presented in London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and then in Belfast, Northern Ireland at Queens Court. The painting "Magical Space Forms" from 1951, reproduced below, was included in this exhibition.

Feitelson, along with his wife Helen Lundeberg and the aforementioned artists, pioneered a movement that has been celebrated by the Orange County Museum’s nationally toured exhibition Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury.