Chronology

1908 Born in Chicago, June 24, to second – generation Swedish Lutheran parents. One younger sister, Inez Selma.

1912 Family moves to Pasadena, California, where her father works for a real estate and stock brokerage company.

1914 Attends Longfellow Grammar School after having learned to read at home.

1921 Graduates from grammar school; enters Pasadena High School.

                        Participates in a program, “Study of Gifted Children” conducted by Stanford University to study the characteristics and development of children who ranked in the top 1% in California schools. Follow-up continues through 1945.

1925 June. Finishes high school. Remains at home that summer until the Fall of 1927 to help her mother, who is ill. Reads extensively during this time, including novels, poetry, and travel books. Goes to Sunday school and church, primarily for the music and the peaceful ambience.

1927 Begins Pasadena Junior College. Spends an extra semester catching up on Algebra and Geometry, not taken in high school. Enjoys both.

1930 Graduates from junior college.

                        Spring. Family friend sponsors classes for three months at Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena. Studies with Lawrence Murphy who teaches Bridgman-style figure construction and composition class.

                        Summer. Lorser Feitelson takes over classes from Murphy. Bridgman style no longer taught. Under Feitelson, both classes include discussion and graphic analyses of the structural principles of early and late Renaissance masters, as well as Moderns. Learns to distinguish art from illustration.

1931 June. Encouraged by Lorser Feitelson, submits and exhibits first figure painting, Apple Harvest, in the “Sixth Annual Exhibition of Southern California Art” at the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego.

1933 The Mountain selected for the “Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture”, Los Angeles Museum.
                       
                        June. First one-person exhibition at Stanley Rose on Vine Street in Hollywood.

                        September. One-person exhibition at the Assistant League.
                       
                        December. Exhibits Self Portrait in the invitational, “Exhibition by Progressive Painters of Southern California”, Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego.

                        Does easel paintings for the Federal Public Works Art Project (PWAP). Moves to Los Angeles where PWAP offices are located. Becomes involved in the formulation of Feitelson’s theory of New Classicism (or Subjective Classicism), later known as Post-Surrealism.

1934 June. Exhibits first Post-Surrealist painting, Persephone, at the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego in the “Eighth Annual Southern California Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture”.

                        November. With Feitelson, participates in the first group showing of Post-Surrealist work at the Centaur Gallery in Hollywood.

                        Authors and publishes first theoretical manifesto entitled, “New Classicism”.

                        A loose association of artists who support this movement is formed which includes Lucian Labaudt and Knud Merrild. Grace Clements, Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, etc., exhibit in later shows.

1935 May. Exhibits Double Portrait of the Artist in Time, an important early work, in “Post-Surrealists and Other Moderns” at the Stanley Rose Gallery on Hollywood Blvd. Although she had been painting only five years, it ranks as one of her outstanding achievements.

                        Participates in group exhibition of Post-Surrealists at the Hollywood Gallery of Modern Art on Hollywood Blvd.

                        The Post-Surrealists mount a group exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art which travels to The Brooklyn Museum the following Spring, marking their first East Coast presentation.

1936 Because of East Coast exposure, Lundeberg, Feitelson and Merrild are invited to be part of “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in December. Is represented by Cosmicide, completed in 1935.

                        Completes two murals for the Los Angeles County Hall of Records for the California Works Progress Administration Federal Art Projects (WPA/FAP).

1937 Works as assistant on Feitelson’s murals for Thomas A. Edison High School. Also makes four lithographs for the Project.

1938-42 Designs murals for the WPA/FAP including oil vignette on acoustic plaster and Petrachrome murals.

                        Murals still exist at Los Angeles Patriotic Hall, Venice High School Library, George Washington High School, Canoga Park High School, Fullerton Police Station and at Centinela Park.

1942 Exhibits in “Americans 1942 / 18 Artists from 9 States”, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with a group of Post-surrealist paintings.

                        Begins to paint “postcard” size paintings, among them the Abandoned Easel series, as a reaction to the scale and impersonality of work executed on mural projects. From this time on until 1958, continues to paint landscapes, interiors, and still-lifes which draw from memory, imagination, and observation, rather than from reality.

1949 Awarded first purchase prize for The Clouds in the “Ninth Invitational Purchase Prize Art Exhibition”, sponsored by the Chaffey Community Art Association, California.

1950 Receives $1000 First Purchase Award for Spring in the “1950 Annual Exhibition / Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity”, Los Angeles County Museum.
                       
                        Paints A Quiet Place, which presages later paintings such as The Road (1958), in which unmodulated geometric areas suggest three-dimensional space and perspective.

1950-58 Increasingly uses flat geometric areas and cast shadows to create spatial environment. Objects such as shells and fruits are depicted three-dimensionally.

1952 Exhibits The Wind That Blew the Sky Away in “The Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting”, Carnegie Institute, Pennsylvania.

1953 One-person retrospective at The Pasadena Art Institute, California.

1957 Awarded $400 prize for Selma in “1957 Annual Exhibition / Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity”, Los Angeles County Museum.

1958 Exhibits in joint retrospective with Feitelson at Scripps College, Claremont, California. Demarcates major turning points in their painting careers and reveals the distinct contrast between the two artists’ work from 1933 to 1958.

1959 Begins series of paintings composed entirely of flat geometric areas, suggesting landscapes, interiors, and streets, as well as the effects of perspective, light, and shadow. Refers to three-dimensional reality, yet ambiguous.

1962 Participates in “Geometric Abstraction in America” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, an important East Coast exhibition reaffirming her national recognition.

                        Paints the first work in her Arches series; introduces curved shapes.

                        Uses the white of primed canvas as form.

1963 Completes Triptych, one of her most important paintings of this period, noted by a shift in her palette from restrained tones to stronger contrasts of color and value. Paints ribbons of color across entire width of three sections. Feitelson was encouraged to begin his Line paintings by her technical innovation of using masking tape to “draw” and paint lines.

1964 Continues work on the arch motif, exemplified by Desert Light. Uses black or white canvas to “frame” the view of abstract landscape as in Desert View.

                        Exhibits in “California Hard-Edge Painting” at the Pavilion Gallery, Balboa, California, marking the first official inclusion of her work in this movement.

1965 Switches to acrylics with Planet #1 after solely using oils for thirty-five years.

                        Continues with her Planet series, returning to the Post-surrealist subject matter of planets and the cosmos, which fascinated her as a student.

                        Uses circle within black or colored square, which permits great variety of patterns suggesting, without modeling, a sphere in space.

1971 Retrospective exhibition of work from 1933 to 1971 at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California. Described as “classicist” because of continual emphasis on aesthetic structure. Exhibition traces development from early works based on a Renaissance organizational plan, through Post-surrealist attitudes, to hard-edge forms.

1973-76 Works on second series of small pictures.

1974 Participates in “Nine Senior Southern California Painters”, the opening exhibition of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. This exhibition is mounted as a tribute to artists integral to the historical development of modernism in Southern California.

1978 Lorser Feitelson dies of heart failure.

1979 Concentrates on a series of land and seascapes, which are based on variations of one hue such as Blue Calm.

                        August. Returns to “interiors” and “painting-within-painting” themes with closely related grayed color, such as Grey Interior I and II.
                       
                        Retrospective exhibition of work from 1933 to 1978 at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Emphasizes Lundeberg’s focus on the dimensions of space in early Post-Surrealist paintings as well as more abstract paintings of the sixties and seventies. 

1980/81            Retrospective exhibitionat San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with Lorser Feitelson. The show travels to The Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery in Los Angeles.

1981 Is honored with the Award for outstanding achievement in the visual arts by the College Arts Association and Women’s Caucus for Art in San Francisco.

1982 The Graham Gallery in New York mounts exhibition surveying five decades of her work.

1983 The Palm Springs Desert Museum organizes “Helen Lundeberg Since 1970”, a retrospective exhibition.

1987 Restoration of the Fullerton Police Station mural History of Southern California.

                        Tobey C. Moss Gallery produces documentary, “Helen Lundeberg - American Painter.”

                        Receives the Vesta Award from the Woman’s Building Art Center.

1988 The Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosts the exhibition “80th A Birthday Salute to Helen Lundeberg”.

                        Receives the Palm Springs Desert Museum’s Woman of the Year Award.

                        The mural History of Transportation raises preservation and conservation interest.

Retrospective exhibition at Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery in Santa Cruz.

1990 Receives an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the Otis-Parsons College of Art.

                        Receives a grant from the Richard A. Florsheim Art Fund for American Artists of Merit.

1993 Receives the Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1994 The Venice High School Library opens its doors to the public to view the mural, History of California.

1999 April 19, dies in Los Angeles.

                        Memorial exhibition at Tobey C. Moss Gallery.

                        May 23, a memorial is held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

2000-04 J. Paul Getty Grant Program “Preserve L.A.” initiative awards the City of Inglewood a grant for the restoration and re-siting of History of Transportation.

                        History of Transportation is accepted into the California Register of Historical Resources.

                        The J. Paul Getty Grant Program, the California Heritage Fund Grant, the Park Bond 2000 Act and the Urban Recreational and Cultural Centers (URCC), combine funds to initiate restoration and relocation of History of Transportation.

                        History of Transportation is removed for restoration and relocation.

                        History of Transportation will be relocated to Grevillea Art Park in downtown Los Angeles.

2004 “Helen Lundeberg and the Illusory Landscape” Exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts

Initial information compiled from the 1980 exhibition catalogue, Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective Exhibition, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.