Magical Forms: California Abstraction

On View in the Hartman Pavilion Galleries
May 18, 2017 - June 11, 2017

Known as Abstract Classicists, the painters in the exhibition Magical Forms: California Abstraction - Lorser Feitelson, John McLaughlin, Karl Benjamin, Helen Lundeberg, June Harwood, and Frederic Hammersley - staked out a pictorial trajectory that celebrated the simple, yet stark interconnections between space and form. Magical Forms, drawn entirely from the collection of the Long Beach Museum of Art, demonstrates the rich history of California painting as it evolved, in the 1950s and 60s, toward a distinctly local expression that had sprung from the region's crisp desert climate, seductive color, and sprawling architectural forms.