Installation of *Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945-1990* at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the Palm Springs Art Museum. Installation photography by Lance Gerber. Lundeberg paintings are on the left wall.

Los Angeles Times Review: Space-age art pulsates with the spirit of exploration at the Palm Springs Art Museum

October 31, 2024

Christopher Knight, art critic at the Los Angeles Times, has reviewed “Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945-1990” at the Palm Springs Art Museum. The exhibition is curated by Sharrissa Iqbal, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and guest curator Michael Duncan.

Helen Lundeberg’s Among the Planets, 1961, Planet Rising, 1967, and Untitled (Sectioned Planet), 1969, are included in the exhibition. The exhibition is comprised of abstract artworks by artists who worked in Southern California alongside burgeoning technologies emerging from Mount Wilson Observatory, the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena and Cal Tech.

Of the three Lundeberg paintings in the exhibition, Knight states “these exceptional abstract paintings fully unshackle imagination.” The entire review can be read on the LA Times website: latimes.com

SPOTLIGHT

GREY INTERIOR II

Helen Lundeberg, Grey Interior II, 1979 acrylic on canvas 60” x 50”, Collection and © The Feitelson / Lundeberg Art Foundation, Courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts.

Helen Lundeberg’s Grey Interior II, 1979 was exhibited several times shortly after the painting was completed. It was purchased by a corporate collector in 1986 and, as far as we know, not exhibited since. Several members of our Board recall Lundeberg expressing particular satisfaction with this work. In 2017 the Foundation reaquired the painting for its collection. Lundeberg prepared the following statement which was located in the Feitelson/Lundeberg Papers at the Archive of American Art:

“GRAY INTERIOR II is a recent work, one of a series of “gray” paintings, which represents some of the themes and pictorial devices and structures which have recurred throughout my work for many years. Closely related color (in this painting, grays varied by small additions of raw umber and red); the use of areas of white-primed canvas as form; paintings within the painting; abstract evocation of landscape and architectural fragments; cast shadows to enhance 3-D illusion. It also represents an intention, constant in my work, to create a subjective entity both formal and lyrical through strictly planned and executed organization, of colors, forms, and value.”

Lundeberg's statement has been reproduced verbatim. We are aware that there is a discepancy between her spelling of "Gray" and the title for this work in numerous exhibitions and articles: Grey Interior II.