Explore the Era

Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.

Helen Lundeberg
Artist

Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg in front of one of her paintings. Photo by Frank J. Thomas. Courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives

Helen Lundeberg (1908–1999) was born in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Pasadena, California, as a child. Lundeberg enrolled in art classes in 1930 at the Stickney Memorial School of Art, where she met the painter Lorser Feitelson, who would later become her husband and an artistic collaborator. After painting in social realist and post-surrealist styles in the 1930s and 1940s, Lundeberg began experimenting with abstraction, juxtaposing and layering geometric forms on the two-dimensional picture plane. Her work, along with that of Feitelson, contributed to what became known as California hard-edge painting.

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Works of Art

  • Blue Planet

    Blue Planet, 1965, Helen Lundeberg. Acrylic on canvas. 60 x 60 in. The Marilynn and Carl Thoma Collection. © Feitelson Arts Foundation, courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts

Explore the Archive

  • Abstract Classicists

    Abstract Classicists meet at Lorser Feitelson’s studio in Los Angeles, May 10, 1959