The Pasadena Museum of California Art presents Love Never Fails: The Art of Edouard and Luvena Vysekal on view September 18, 2011 – January 8, 2012.
The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) is proud to present Love Never Fails: The Art of Edouard and Luvena Vysekal, the first museum exhibition to bring together the work of husband and wife Edouard and Luvena Vysekal. The couple became emblematic of modernism in a conservative art community, opening the door to an avant-garde aesthetic. Featuring over sixty paintings, sketches and photographs, the exhibition examines the deeply intertwined, but distinctive oeuvres of the two artists.
―Love Never Fails‖ was a favorite song of the couple, sung at their wedding and at his memorial service, a hymn that aptly describes their devotion to each other in marriage and in their artistic practices. While Edouard’s paintings in watercolor and oil of landscapes, cityscapes, nudes, still lifes, portraits, and allegorical subjects tended to be more experimental, ranging from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to semi-abstraction, Luvena’s portraits and still lifes in oil hewed closer to Realism. Both artists were notable for their use of color—bold and strong—as well as their sharp senses of humor, which would often permeate their portrait work. Together, they participated in exhibitions as members of the early progressive art organizations in Los Angeles, such as California Progressive Group as well more traditional art clubs like the California Art Club, gaining respect from modern and conservative critics and audiences alike. Edouard Vysekal also left his imprint on future artists as an instructor of drawing and painting at the Art Students League of Los Angeles and at the Otis Art Institute from 1922-1939.
Some of the works in the exhibition have never been exhibited and others have not been shown since 1954, when Luvena passed away and the Vysekal Studio Gallery was closed. Curated by Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, co-curator of the critically acclaimed 2008 PMCA exhibition A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles (1906-1953), the exhibition and accompanying catalogue will feature new research and insight into the work of the couple. Less than a quarter of a century after the Vysekals arrived on the Los Angeles art scene, they had established themselves as vital components, leaving a lasting imprint on the development of modernism in the city.
For information, the please call 626-568-3665 or visit the website: www.pmcaonline.org
Image: Edouard Vysekal, Figure in Shadows, 1927, Oil on canvas, 36 x 34 inches, The Irvine Museum