Los Angeles, California.- Jack Rutberg Fine Arts is honored to present two solo exhibitions which continue the gallery’s themed Pacific Standard Time shows, which debuted September 28th, 2011 with an historic Hans Burkhardt exhibition. “Claire Falkenstein: An Expansive Universe” and “Ruth Weisberg: Now & Then” are both on view at the gallery from February 18th through April 28th. Ruth Weisberg will be inattendance for the opening reception of Saturday, February 18th from 6.00 to 9.00 pm.
“Claire Falkenstein: An Expansive Universe” features a selection of the artist’s larger sculptural work and rarely-seen paintings, and follows an earlier Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the gallery of her intimately-scaled sculpture, wall pieces and iconic jewelry. Claire Falkenstein’s (1908-1997) work, with its innovative use of materials such as glass, metal and resin, reveals a prescient fascination with the possibilities of chance and choice which parallels current views of our expanding universe. Her ability to move sculpture to non-traditional realms, whereby she incorporates and suggests both the expansiveness of form as well as the compression of space, has established her as one of the most important modern artists in this medium. Falkenstein is well-known as the creator of Peggy Guggenheim’s Venice palazzo gates. Falkenstein’s first solo museum exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1940 was followed by her works being shown at such prestigious museums as the Louvre and the Rodin Museums of Paris.
Moving to Paris for 13 years in 1950, her studio was a central meeting place for admiring critics and artists. Her works were shown at The Tate Gallery in London, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Venice, National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Armand Hammer Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The exhibition also launches the first major publication detailing her entire career – Claire Falkenstein – with essays by art historians Susan M. Anderson and Maren Henderson, art writer and critic Michael Duncan, and an introduction by Philip Linhares, President of the Falkenstein Foundation and former Chief Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum of California.
“Ruth Weisberg: Now & Then” presents paintings and works on paper by one of Los Angeles’ most celebrated figurative artists since her arrival in 1969. The exhibition, which includes her most recent paintings, and spanning more than three decades, reveals Weisberg’s unique vision through which the viewer sees the convergence of art history, personal memory, and cultural experience. The exhibition reveals Weisberg’s decades-long interest in re-imagining the works of such past masters as Titian, Velazquez, Blake and Corot. Through fresco-like effects in her unstretched paintings, as well as the veils of washes in her masterful lithographs, Weisberg brings past-time into contemporary context. Ruth Weisberg is currently a professor at USC, where she was one of the longest tenured Deans of the Roski School of Fine Art. Ruth Weisberg is the first living painter to have been afforded a solo exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum of Art. She holds that distinction as well at the Huntington Library. Her first major survey in Los Angeles was in 1979 at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. The subject of over 80 solo and 185 group exhibitions, Weisberg’s work is included in the permanent collections of over 60 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art, Portland Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, Norton Simon Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, and Rome Institute Nationale per la Grafica, among many others.
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles was established in 1979 as a gallery dealing in Modern and Contemporary art. In that capacity they have acted as dealer, curator, and consultant for more than 25 years, representing a wide range of important American and European artists. Jack Rutberg hismelf has lectured extensively on a wide range of subjects related to Modern and Contemporary art in colleges and universities, including the University of California Los Angeles, California State University Northridge, Utah State University, Pierce College, Fullerton College, Orange Coast College, and Rancho Santiago College. Credited with bringing significant artists to broader public attention, Mr. Rutberg has been particularly responsible for the formidable attention afforded to the Irish contemporary painter Patrick Graham and Swiss born American painter Hans Burkhardt (1904-1994).
Both artists are represented internationally by Jack Rutberg Fine Arts. Mr. Rutberg is the exclusive agent for The Hans G. & Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation. Regarded as an authority on their works, Mr. Rutberg has on frequent occasions lectured on both artists at numerous museums. Mr. Rutberg has published extensively on the works of Hans Burkhardt. Among the many catalogues published to date on Burkhardt, Mr. Rutberg has written the catalogue raisonné, Hans Burkhardt: The War Paintings, published by Santa Susana Press, California State University Northridge. Documented are Burkhardt’s paintings created in response to war, spanning the Spanish Civil War through the mid 1980’s. Other publications include Hans Burkhardt: Desert Storms, Burkhardt’s response to the Iraq Kuwait conflict, published in 1991, and Black Rain documenting Burkhardt’s final works dating from 1993 and most recently, Hans Burkhardt: Paintings of the 1960s. In more than 29 years at its La Brea Avenue location, the Rutberg Gallery has featured exhibitions by gallery represented artists Jordi Alcaraz, Hans Burkhardt, Patrick Graham, Reuben Nakian, Ruth Weisberg, Jerome Witkin and Francisco Zuniga in addition to a wide range of solo exhibitions of major international artists: Alexander Calder, Oskar Fischinger, Sam Francis, Arshile Gorky, George Herms, Hundertwasser, Käthe Kollwitz, Georges Rouault, Edward Ruscha, Antoni Tapies, Max Weber and others. The gallery has been particularly noteworthy for its emphasis on education, presenting numerous lectures and panel discussions. Through that endeavor, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts is an important resource for established and beginning collectors, art historians, and museums internationally. Visit the gallery’s website at … http://www.jackrutbergfinearts.com/