Courtesy image: Blue Square Cluster, 1937 | 43 x 43 inches | oil on canvas
SANTA BARBARA — A groundbreaking solo exhibition, “Oskar Fischinger: A Deeper Look,” is set to open at Sullivan Goss Gallery on January 2nd, shining a long-overdue spotlight on the innovative painting career of the pioneer of abstract animation and visual music, Oskar Fischinger. The exhibition coincides with the release of the first major monograph dedicated entirely to his work as a painter, an attempt to “balance the scales” on an artist whose 800-painting body of work has been overlooked by the focus on his films. Together these projects celebrate the rediscovery of a pioneering Los Angeles artist whose work is as relevant and fascinating today as it has ever been.
While Fischinger (1900-1967) is rightly celebrated for his revolutionary abstract films, his commitment to painting spanned over 30 years—a period longer than his work in cinema. The exhibition will feature a selection of his most idiosyncratic canvases, demonstrating an evolution driven by his unique vision and an outsider mentality – including early works that were developed in conjunction with various film projects, a major stereoscopic painting that we recently featured in an exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and important late works from the mid-60s.
The accompanying monograph, Oskar Fischinger, with an introduction by Paul Karlstrom and essay by gallery owner, Nathan Vonk, serves as the definitive text to date on this aspect of his life’s work. It examines his development after his arrival in Los Angeles in 1936, a period marked by his influential relationships with figures like German émigré art dealer Galka Scheyer (patron of The Blue Four) and Baroness Hilla von Rebay, curator for the newly established Solomon R. Guggenheim foundation in New York. Despite the challenges of Los Angeles’ nascent contemporary art scene, Fischinger’s creative freedom allowed for groundbreaking works that were utterly unique in the history of art from this region. Today his paintings are in the collection of nearly every major museum in California and prominent institutions like MOMA, the Guggenheim, and the Smithsonian on the East Coast.
With this exhibition and book Sullivan Goss aims to introduce the incredible paintings of Oskar Fischinger to an even wider audience of curators and collectors.