60 artists, 70 Works. Pasadena deserves its place in art history.
The Los Angeles art scene takes center stage at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Pasadena in an expansive and unique exhibition entitled Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy, opening with a preview reception on Sunday, June 7, from 3:00 to 6:00 pm, and extending through August 29.
“I’m quite proud of the exhibition, but more than that, it’s my most direct volley in hoping to make a difference in bringing awareness of so much that has been culturally absent. This isn’t unique today in the broader art world, but perhaps Pasadena vs LA is the ‘best example,’ and the most egregious example.”
“There’s always hope that a pebble can start the avalanche,” continued Rutberg. “From the initial response to our PR effort for “Pasadena: L.A’s Art Legacy” from wider corners, there are indications of at least some hope in these challenging times.”
The exhibition brings into focus Pasadena’s outsized and yet seldom addressed role in L.A.’s recognition as a major international art center. L.A. has the buzz! Despite the Pasadena area’s large community of artists, art schools, and art museums that rival the finest institutions in America, what the broader Pasadena area has lacked over these many decades is a sustaining “gallery scene” that complements the art exhibited in those institutions. Even Pasadena’s most consequential artists rarely exhibited in Pasadena galleries.
Since its move to Pasadena, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts–among L.A.’s longest established galleries–has charted that absence. Taking a deep dive into the exhibition histories of these local art institutions proved revelatory as Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy offers paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by nearly 60 artists from the gallery’s holdings–comprising the 70 works in this exhibition–all for sale. Each work in the exhibition is accompanied by a label noting provenance and the year in which museum(s) presented the artist’s exhibition.
While not intended as a treatise on art history, the revelations and timeline anecdotes in the exhibition are surprising, perhaps none more so than the inclusion of Alexander Calder, who lived in Pasadena in 1907-1909, blocks from the Rutberg gallery’s location. Calder’s father created a basement studio for young “Sandy,” where he made drawings and wire objects. Attending the Tournament of Roses and seeing horse-drawn chariots made a considerable impact and may well have seeded his lifelong interest in the circus–most famously, creating Calder’s Circus in 1926.
Each work in the exhibition can offer a surprise. One of the most widely known images in contemporary art is the photograph by Julian Wasser of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) playing chess with the nude Eve Babitz at Duchamp’s now-legendary 1963 retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. This is pictured on a wall label for two works by Duchamp’s older brother, Jacques Villon (1875-1963), a significant artist in his own right who showed at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1966 and is included in Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy.
In addition to Old Master, the exhibition includes a wide range of 20th- and 21st-Century artists: Karel Appel, Emil Bisttram, Morris Broderson, Hans Burkhardt, Alexander Calder, Jean Charlot, José Luis Cuevas, Jules Engel, Claire Falkenstein, Lorser Feitelson, Oskar Fischinger, Llyn Foulkes, Sam Francis, Patrick Graham, Mark Steven Greenfield, Frederick Hammersley, Stanley William Hayter, George Herms, Peter Krasnow, Rico Lebrun, Rene Magritte, Andre Masson, Henry Moore, Jim Morphesis, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Alison Saar, Elise Seeds, James Strombotne, Mark Tobey, Gordon Wagner, Ruth Weisberg and Jack Zajac.
The extraordinary range of Contemporary, Modern and Old Master exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum–before and following Duchamp’s 1963 exhibition–is exemplified by a work by the important French etcher, Jacques Callot (1592- 1635), shown at the museum in 1961 and 1964. In 1965 the museum presented an exhibition of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1751-1756). Fine examples of both artists are included in the Rutberg Gallery exhibition, as is a recent acquisition by Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Goya has been presented at the Pasadena, Norton Simon, and Huntington Museums.
A notable work in the exhibition, and exhibited for the first time, is a recently rediscovered 1887 oil on canvas, Bouquet of Flowers, by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904). Also shown are two exquisite original lithographs: one depicting his sisters embroidering and the other inspired by a scene from a Wagnerian opera. The three works serve as a retrospective of sorts, exemplifying the three distinct aspects of the artist’s body of work. Fantin-Latour is represented in the Norton Simon Museum collection with an exceptional painting of flowers. The Pasadena Art Museum presented two exhibitions of Fantin-Latour in 1953-54 and 1970.
Among the exhibition’s notable standouts is Hans Burkhardt’s large 1948 painting, Pasadena Bridge, a well-known city icon typically rendered in a realist manner. In contrast, Burkhardt (1904-1994) depicts the Colorado Street Bridge in his surrealist, expressionist manner reflecting the monumental bridge’s provocative history–“the suicide bridge”–in what is surely its most compelling depiction. In 1957, the Pasadena Art Museum presented a mid-career retrospective of Hans Burkhardt.
Other early Modern artists in the exhibition include Edgar Degas, James McNeil Whistler, Honore Daumier, Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Max Klinger, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Georges Rouault, Alexander Archipenko, Käthe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Paul Klee, Stanton MacDonald-Wright,
Morgan Russell, Marc Chagall, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, and Diego Rivera.
In these times, when art galleries increasingly focus on contemporary and emerging artists, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts is a singular presence, offering contemporary art in such a historic context. Historic relevance doesn’t necessarily correspond to dollar value, and that too will surprise visitors, as evidenced by the works in different media included in Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy–especially when the news is filled with hundred-million-dollar art sales.