San Clemente to Laguna Beach

While enjoying our vacation on the beach in San Clemente, I drove up to Laguna Beach to roam through some art galleries and through the Laguna Art Museum.  I enjoyed some of their permanent collection and two special exhibits.  One exhibit is entitled California Printmakers, 1950-2000 and the other Robert Henri's California: Realism, Race and Region 1914-1925.

Robert Henri was born in 1865 in Cincinnati, Ohio and died in 1929.  He was a distant cousin of Mary Cassatt, artist.  He studied art in Philadelphia and later founded a group called the Ashcan School who left their love of impressionism to engage in a more realistic art to create what was said to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and now...a smell of human life.  He worked in Philadelphia and Paris.  He later taught at the New York School of Art with students including Edward Hopper and George Bellows.  His first wife died in 1905 and he married Marjorie, a 22 year old cartoonist. 
He later traveled to the Western coast of Ireland and spent several summers in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


Here are my photos of my favorites from the Laguna Art Museum:

                  Scenes of the San Clemente Pier and Beach

     "The Old Post Office," 1922-23 by Joseph Kleitsch, Hungarian, 1882-1831, active U.S.

     Kleitsch was a noted portrait painter who moved to Laguna Beach in 1920.  He loved living

     in Laguna and painted the charm of the small town.

"El Paseo Street," 1924 by F. Carl Schmidt, American 1885-1969.  Schmidt studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to California.  This is a view of El Paseo street in Laguna, site of the first art festival held in August 1932.

"Portrait of a Laborer," 1945 by Francis De Erdely, Hungarian, 1897-1956, active in U.S.
De Erdely settled in Los Angeles in 1944 and is known for expressive and compassionate paintings of the lives of Mexican immigrants.

"The Card Players," 1956 by Hans Gustav Burkhardt, Swiss, 1904-1994, active in U.S.
Burkhardt lived in Los Angeles from 1937.  The painting harkens back to The Card Players by Cezanne and from Picasso.

"Untitled," 1959 by John Altoon, American, 1925-1969.  He is a native of Los Angeles and lived in New York where he developed his style of action painting and then lived in Mallorca before returning to L.A. The description states that Altoon's abstractions are about he artist's own presence, his gestures, as he paints with a messy abandon, free from the traditional ideal of art as imitation of reality.

"The Suspension," 1971-73 by Lyn Foulkes, American, b. 1934

"Jolly Cones," 2002 by Wayne Thiebaud, American, b. 1920.
The artist brush strokes make an image one wants to eat right off the canvas.

"Abstraction," 1955 by Karl Benjamin, American, 1925-2012

"The Beach Hat," 1914 by Robert Henri.
This painting is of Henri's second wife, Marjorie Organ who was an artist herself and the artist's favorite subject.
The description states that the bright palette reflects the Southern California environment.

"Hotel Acatlan:  Second Day, from the Moving Focus series," 1985 by David Hockney, born 1937, England, works in Hollywood.  Color lithograph.