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.

John Altoon
Artist

John Altoon, ca. 1963

John Altoon smoking, ca. 1963. Image courtesy of Larry Bell. Photo by Dennis Hopper and © The Dennis Hopper Trust

John Altoon (1925–1969) was one of the most outspoken, charismatic, and complex figures of Los Angeles’s Ferus Gallery scene of the late 1950s and 1960s. Like many Los Angeles artists, Altoon attended art school on the GI Bill, first at Otis Art Institute and then at Art Center in Pasadena. Travels in New York and Europe exposed him to surrealism and abstract expressionism, styles that would figure into Altoon’s later work. His numerous paintings and drawings, created from the early 1950s until his death in 1969, reflect an intensely idiosyncratic style that embraced bright colors, biometric forms, abstract and representative images, and humorous play.

Historic Map Locations

Works of Art

  • Ocean Park Series

    Ocean Park Series, 1962, John Altoon. Oil on canvas. 72 x 84 in. Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA: Museum purchase with additional funds provided by Dr. James B. Pick and Dr. Rosalyn M. Laudati, Mr. Ward Chamberlin, Mrs. E.G. Chamberlin, Patricia Fredericks, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Neisser, Mr. and Mrs. John Martin Shea, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Goldstein, Zada Taylor, Mr. David H. Steinmetz, and Mrs. Bernard McDonald. Permission courtesy of the Estate of John Altoon and Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Photo by Gene Ogami

Explore the Archive

  • Video: Irving Blum and Billy Al Bengston on John Altoon

    Video: Irving Blum and Billy Al Bengston speak about the work of John Altoon, 2010-11

  • John Altoon in his studio

    John Altoon in his studio, ca. 1968. Image courtesy of and © Joe Goode

  • Frank Gehry, Babs Altoon, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, John Altoon, and Tony Berlant

    Frank Gehry, Babs Altoon, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, John Altoon, and Tony Berlant at Culture Day at LACMA (L.A. County Museum of Art), 1968. Photo by and © Julian Wasser. Courtesy of Julian Wasser, Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, and Museum Associates/LACMA

  • Artists outside the Ferus Gallery

    Artists outside the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, 1959. Clockwise from top: Billy Al Bengston, Irving Blum, Ed Moses, and John Altoon. Photo by William Claxton. Courtesy Demont Photo Management, LLC.

  • Los Angeles artists at Culture Day at LACMA, 1968

    Several Los Angeles artists at Culture Day at LACMA (L.A. County Museum of Art), 1968. Photo by and © Julian Wasser.