1898

Born February 11, 1898, Savannah, Georgia.

Family moves to New York City.

Before the age of six, receives first lessons in figure drawing from his father, whose analytical approach makes a deep and lasting impression.  Exposed to works and reproductions of the masters as well as contemporary art in his father’s extensive library and periodical collection.

1916

Meets Robert Henri, organizer of the landmark 1908 group exhibition “The Eight.” 

Occupies a studio in Greenwich Village.

1910

At age 12, begins painting in oils.

1917

Moves to a new studio above the Penguin Club on 15th Street.  During these early years works alone and educates himself by visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Meets Pascin, the English Cubo-Futurist, at the Penguin Club.

1913

Attends the Armory Show in New York, where he is impressed by the work of Cézanne, Duchamp, Matisse and Gauguin.

 Begins to study the work of Italian Futurist, Boccioni, initiating his own work with kinetic organization.

1918

Meets Walter Pach, John Sloan and Arthur B. Davies.

1919 

Visited by Gaston Lachaise.

Takes first trip to Paris and enrolls himself at the Académie Colorossi as an independent student in life drawing.  During his stay in Paris, notes exhaustion of Cubism and revival of classicism. 

1920

Returns to New York, moves into a studio on 14th Street. 

Sees work of Brancusi, most likely at the Société Anonyme. 

Impressed by the early work of Nadelman. 

Creates one square of a composite wall-hanging by “The Eight,” at the request of John Sloan.

1925-

1926

Brooklyn Museum acquires Feitelson’s large painting, Diana at the Bath.

1922

Returns to Paris.

Aware that artists Picasso, Derain, Théophile Robert and others are working in a classical style; critics proclaim Cubism to be dead and Neoclassicism the new mode. 

Turns from kinetic organizations towards more formal figure compositions. 

Travels through Italy and is re-inspired by the early Renaissance masters.

1926-
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1927

Returns to Paris and takes a studio on Rue de Seine.

1923

Visits Corsica, Italy; his sketches from this island will become the basis for later neo-classical works of peasant subjects.

1927-

1928

Exhibits in the Salon d’Automne.

Returns to the United States and travels to Los Angeles in November for a winter stay which becomes his permanent residence.

1924

Returns to New York, occupying a studio on East 64th Street.

Begins exhibiting at the Daniel Gallery and receives critical acclaim for his neo-classical painting, Judgment of Paris.

1928

Moves into a studio on Highland Avenue, in the heart of Hollywood.

Exhibits with Nathalie Newking at Wilshire Galleries, directed by an acquaintance of Winslow Homer. 

Premiere solo museum exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.

Solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Meets Stanton Macdonald-Wright.

1925

Premiere solo exhibition at the Daniel Gallery, New York.

1929

Exhibits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Conrad Buff, Nathalie Newking and Hanson Puthuff. 

Teaches a summer painting course at the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles.

1930

Formulates first ideas of Subjective Classicism, to be known as Post-Surrealism. 

Los Angeles Times publishes Feitelson’s article, “Eclecticism…What Is It?” on January 26th.

Hired as an instructor at the Stickney Hall School of Art in Pasadena, California.  Meets Helen Lundeberg, one of his students.

Exhibits in a Neo-Classical show at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. 

Meets art critic and writer, Jules Langsner.

1935

Designs and directs the new Stanley Rose Gallery, organizing exhibits of Juan Gris, Carlos Merida, Post-Surrealists, Lundeberg, Kadish, Merrild and Goldstein (Guston).  Leaves the Rose Gallery to direct the Hollywood Gallery of Modern Art, located across from the Egyptian Theatre.

Along with Alexander Archipenko, juries a Modern Art Show.

Included in a Post-Surrealist show at the War Memorial Museum in San Francisco, which traveled to the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

1930-

1931

Ruben Kadish and Philip Goldstein (Philip Guston) are among Feitelson’s students.

1936

Included in a critically acclaimed Post-Surrealist exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.  Exhibits in “Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism,” Museum of Modern Art, New York, through 1937.

1932

Resides on DeLongpre Avenue in Hollywood. 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art acquires his painting, Two Peasant Children.

1936-

1937

Begins work on the Los Angeles County Hall of Records mural for the California Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP).

1933

Resides on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood. 

Exhibits at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.

1937

Moves to studio on Western Avenue just north of Melrose where he will remain for ten years.

Appointed Supervisor of Murals, Paintings and Sculpture for Southern California, Federal Art Project.

Exhibits in the School of Paris show at the Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles. 

Exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in “1937 Exhibition of Contemporary American Art.”

1933-

1934

Stanley Rose and Murray Youlin open the first contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles at the Centaur bookshop on Selma near Vine in Hollywood.  Feitelson directs and designs the gallery.

1938

Two of Feitelson’s murals are shown at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and three more murals are completed for The Thomas Edison School.

1934

Feitelson founds Subjective Classicism or Post-Surrealism with Helen Lundeberg.  The first Post-Surrealist exhibition is held at the Centaur Gallery in November, includes the work of Feitelson, Lundeberg, Labaudt, Merrild, Ret and Lehman. 

Creates murals for the Federal Public Works Art Project.

1939

Lithograph entitled Reading is included in the New York World’s Fair. 

Begins directing exhibitions with Helen Wurdemann at the Los Angeles Art Association. 

Lithograph, Post-Surrealist Configuration: Biological Symphony is exhibited at the Whitney Annual, New York.

1942

United States enters World War II and the WPA/ FAP begins to limit operations. 

Begins romantic paintings of an introspective, subjective nature.

1947

Becomes director of the Gallery of Mid-20th Century Art on Clark Street, in Los Angeles.

Exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago in Abstract and Surrealist American Art.

Exhibits at the Pasadena Institute of Art, California in “Eighteen California Artists.”

Moves to Clark Street in Los Angeles.

Organizes exhibits at the Mid-20th Century Gallery that include De Chirico, Leonor Fini, Eugene Berman, Helen Lundeberg, Lepri, Brauner, Jacques Herold and Matta, et al.

1943

WPA/FAP officially ends.

1948

Organizes a Stanton Macdonald-Wright exhibition at the Art Center School Galleries.

Paints first Magical Space Form, exploring for the first time the ambiguity of space/form which becomes the predecessor of hard-edge abstraction.

Moves to Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

1944

Begins teaching at the Art Center School, Los Angeles. 

Solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art, featuring romantic paintings incorporating abstract images and his first abstract paintings called Magical Forms.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts includes Feitelson in the “Fourth Biennial Exhibit of Contemporary American Painting.”

1949

Exhibits and lectures widely in Southern California and San Francisco. 

Moves to studios on Ardmore Street in Los Angeles.

1945

Incorporates principles of abstraction in his courses at the Art Center School.

1950

Exhibits at the University of Illinois and in Los Angeles. 

Paints several small paintings in which he uses the bisected format and manipulation of space within the frame. These works presage his later Dichotomic Organizations of the late 1950’s through 1960’s.

1955

Thirty year retrospective at the McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas.

Exhibits in the Whitney Annual, New York. 

Exhibits in the 3rd Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil.

1951

Named Carnegie Visiting Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana.

Exhibits Magical Space Forms, 1951 (68 x 100 inches), at the Los Angeles Art Association, bridging his Magical Forms and Magical Space Forms series.

Exhibits in “Contemporary Painting in the United States” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Juries several exhibitions in Southern California. 

For the first time, uses plain, primed canvas in a painting.

Serves as a juror and is included in the exhibition, “American Watercolors, Drawings and Prints” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 

Moves to studios on 3rd Street in Los Angeles in September.

“Functionists West” group exhibits for the first time at the Los Angeles Art Association, featuring originators Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg, Stephen Longstreet and Elise Cavanna.

1956

Begins a successful television series on NBC entitled “Feitelson on Art,” which lasts through 1963.

1952

Retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Institute, California, is a critical success.

1958

Exhibits at the University of Nebraska Art Galleries in Lincoln. 

Exhibits with Helen Lundeberg at Scripps College, Claremont, California. 

Participates in “Black and White Exhibition,” curated by Jules Langsner in Los Angeles.

1953

Exhibits at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Colorado.

Second exhibit of the “Functionists West” group with fourteen new members. 

Completes a Stripe painting, which derives from ideas taught to students at the Art Center School of Design, using color and spacing to create visual activity.

1959

Organizes and leads a meeting of Abstract Classicists, including Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley, John McLaughlin, with the critic Jules Langsner. 

The landmark exhibition, “Four Abstract Classicists” is held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Organized by Jules Langsner, this show opens at the San Francisco Museum. Later, a revised version under the title of “West Coast Hard Edge” travels to London (Institute of Contemporary Art) and Belfast, Ireland (Queens College).

Exhibits in “50 Paintings by 37 Painters of the Los Angeles Area” at the University of California, Los Angeles, Art Galleries, curated by Henry Hopkins. 

Begins to exhibit at the Paul Rivas Gallery, Los Angeles. 

Uses masking tape for the first time to create sharp edges in his paintings.

1961

Participates in group exhibition “Paintings from the Pacific: Japan, America, Australia, New Zealand” in Auckland, New Zealand.

1965

Exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in “The Responsive Eye.”

Exhibits at the Whitney Annual, New York, through January 1966.

1962

Exhibits in “Geometric Abstraction in America” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

Solo exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art, California. Introduces curvilinear forms, which remain the prominent motif in future work. 

Joins the Ankrum Gallery in Los Angeles.

1966

Exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the “Recent Acquisitions” show (Untitled, 1964).

1962-

1963

Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquires and exhibits Feitelson’s painting, Magical Space Forms, 1955.

Exhibits at the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Des Moines Art Center in “Fifty California Artists,” organized by San Francisco Museum with assistance from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

1968

Joins the David Stuart Galleries, Los Angeles.

1963

Begins first paintings of pure lines, which, by 1965 become the major pictorial element in his painting.

1969

Awarded honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from the Art Center College of Design.

1964

Exhibits at Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

1969-

1971

Exhibits at the American Embassy, Moscow, in “American Contemporary Art,” organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1972

“Lorser Feitelson: A Retrospective Exhibition” is presented at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in August. 

Named Chairman Emeritus of the Fine Arts Department, Art Center College of Design.

1976

Exhibits in “Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Oakland Museum, California, acquires Feitelson’s line painting, Untitled, 1969.

1973

Honored by the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, as a Distinguished American Artist.

1977

Exhibits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Exhibits at the National Collection of Fine Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

David Stuart Galleries presents a solo exhibition of Feitelson’s early works.

1974

Included in “Nine Senior Southern California Painters,” the opening exhibition of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art.

1978

Feitelson dies of heart failure on May 24th brought on by a recent illness.                       

Summer. A memorial is held at the Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles.

1980-

1981

Retrospective exhibition at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The show travels to The Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery at UCLA.

2007-

2009

Included in “Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Mid-century,” Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin.