Hardedge Line Painting
Lorser Feitelson
LORSER FEITELSON, 1963. ENAMEL ON CANVAS.
In the late 50s and early 60s in California, a group of artists reacted against the gestural, painterly style of abstract expression to create a new genre known as ‘Hard-Edge Painting’. It is as the name suggests defined by abrupt transitions from one plane of colour to another, decisive and sudden with no gentle movement. At the heart of this burgeoning movement was Lorser Feitelson who distilled the abstract forms of figurative art into evocative, hypnotic, and ambiguous compositions. A working artist since 1945, Feitelson’s career reads as a microcosm of art history, moving from Cubism to surrealism, to abstraction and finally to the style that defined him and offered him the home he had been searching for, Hard-Edge painting. Feitelson was informed by the biomorphic curves of the body and of the nature around him but reduced it into simple formal elements. His work is one of geometric beauty, elegantly proportioned and sensuous in its clarity.