Helen Lundeberg: Inner/Outer Space at Louis Stern Fine Arts, through November 2, 2024

September 18, 2024

Now on View

Helen Lundeberg: Inner/Outer Space is on view at Louis Stern Fine Arts featuring works by Lundeberg from the inception of her career to her final painting, Two Mountains. Studies drawn from Lundeberg’s biology text books portray a young artist’s curiosity with the world which characterized her ouvre, from microscopic to the cosmic. Works from Lundeberg’s Planet series and Arcanum series play upon these vantage points, as do drawings and paintings that address motifs central to her practice.

Listed by ArtForum as a “Must-See” exhibition, Helen Lundeberg: Inner / Outer Space is on view until November 2, 2024. This exhibition is part of PST Art: Art & Science Collide. For more information about the Getty initiative visit PST.art.

More information about the exhibition can be found on the gallery’s website: https://www.louissternfinearts.com

Image courtesy of Louis Stern Fine Arts. Photograph by Ernest Gibson.

SPOTLIGHT

GREY INTERIOR II

Helen Lundeberg, Grey Interior II, 1979 acrylic on canvas 60” x 50”, Collection and © The Feitelson / Lundeberg Art Foundation, Courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts.

Helen Lundeberg’s Grey Interior II, 1979 was exhibited several times shortly after the painting was completed. It was purchased by a corporate collector in 1986 and, as far as we know, not exhibited since. Several members of our Board recall Lundeberg expressing particular satisfaction with this work. In 2017 the Foundation reaquired the painting for its collection. Lundeberg prepared the following statement which was located in the Feitelson/Lundeberg Papers at the Archive of American Art:

“GRAY INTERIOR II is a recent work, one of a series of “gray” paintings, which represents some of the themes and pictorial devices and structures which have recurred throughout my work for many years. Closely related color (in this painting, grays varied by small additions of raw umber and red); the use of areas of white-primed canvas as form; paintings within the painting; abstract evocation of landscape and architectural fragments; cast shadows to enhance 3-D illusion. It also represents an intention, constant in my work, to create a subjective entity both formal and lyrical through strictly planned and executed organization, of colors, forms, and value.”

Lundeberg's statement has been reproduced verbatim. We are aware that there is a discepancy between her spelling of "Gray" and the title for this work in numerous exhibitions and articles: Grey Interior II.