Edouard VYSEKAL

Czech 1890-American, 1939

Edouard Vysekal 1915
© Harold Bell Wright Website

One of the early Californian Modernists whose work was acclaimed by both conservatives and avant-gardists, and whose teaching inspired many young painters

Born in 1890 into a family of artists in Kutná Hora, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (part of Czechoslovakia after World War I), Edouard Antonin Vysekal was introduced to art at an early age. He began his studies at the Industrial and Art Polytechnic School in Prague before emigrating to the United States at the age of 17, in 1907 to join his father in St Paul, Minnesota.

He studied first at the Art Institute of Saint Paul and then the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under John H Vanderpoel (Dutch/American 1857-1911) and later with Stanton Macdonald Wright (American, 1890-1973), Harry Mills Walcott (American, 1870-1944) and Morgan Russell (American, 1886-1953). Whilst teaching there (1912-14) he met his future wife, Luvena Buchanan (American, 1873-1954), who was at that time one of his students.

Luvena Buchanan sketching Harold Bell Wright
at The Barbara Worth Hotel, El Centro, California, 1915
© Harold Bell Wright Website

They were married in Chicago and, in the same year, they were commissioned to execute a mural for the palatial Barbara Worth Hotel in El Centro, near San Diego in California. On completion of this commission they decided to remain in Southern California and set up a studio home in the Hollywood Hills, where they were to remain for the rest of their lives. They immediately became active in the local art life and both became leading lights of its increasingly important artistic community.

In Circles of Influence: Impressionism to Modernism in Southern California Art 1910-1930, the Orange County Museum of Art notes that, “The establishment of an art community in Southern California coincided with the building and expansion of Los Angeles itself. From the 1890s until the stock market crashed in 1929, the region experienced a period of dramatic economic, social, and cultural growth propelled by real estate development, oil, tourism, and the film industry. During these decades, the new Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art opened, major art schools were established, and Southern California painters formed numerous groups for the purpose of promoting their work. Those artists who forged the transition from conservative to avant-garde aesthetics were concerned with the brilliant effects of color and the drama of expressive brushwork. In fact, the paintings they produced, many of which followed the figurative tradition, defied the region's aesthetic preference for beautiful landscapes. Trained in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and abroad, these painters brought a cosmopolitan sensibility and appreciation for new ideas with them when they moved West and they maintained a consistent dialogue between the West and East coasts.”

Vysekal continued teaching and inspired many Southern California painters, first at the Art Students League of Los Angeles and then at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles (now the Otis College of Art and Design) where he taught life drawing and landscape painting from 1922 until his early death in 1939.

He was one of the 11 founding members of The California Water Color Society, formed in Los Angeles in 1921. His co-founders included Dana Bartlett (American, 1882-1957), Hanson Duvall Puthuff (American, 1875-1972), Donna Norine Schuster (American, 1883-1953), Henri Gilbert de Kruif (American, 1882-1944) and Karl Yens (American, 1868-1945), all of whom were members of the group of California Impressionist painters whose style dominated the art scene in California for the first three decades of the century.

He was also a member of the California Art Club (CAC), founded 1909 by the early California Impressionists or Plein Air Painters (and today the largest professional art organisation in the western United States). Most of the CAC’s founding members had been trained in the art academies of Europe or the prestigious Chicago Art Institute and, together, they developed a style of painting that is today considered unique to California. From 1913 the Club held annual exhibitions in the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art in Exposition Park (the art collection was separated in 1965 and re-named the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

In their book California Impressionism, Will South and William Gerdts defined the early California Art Club as "the single most powerful political force in the annals of California Impressionism".

The effects of Modernism on American art had reverberated across the country following the famous Armory Show in New York in 1913, which had introduced America, certainly the East coast of America, to Europe's avant-garde artists but its impact was initially slow to affect the California Art Club.

Reviewing their sixth annual exhibition in Exposition Park in 1915, the noted Art Critic of the Los Angeles Times, Antony Anderson, commented, "The paintings are of all schools, including the modern French and modern American, with a slight tendency to post-impressionism. The cubists, futurists and other 'ists' are not included" (Artists' Best Work on View, Los Angeles Times, 5 October 1915).

Impact it did have, however, when a schism threatened to split the club’s ranks in 1919, as Anderson reported in an article subtitled A Fly in the Ointment (Of Art and Artists, Los Angeles Times, 31 August 1919). As a result a number of artists led by Helena Adele Dunlap (American, 1876-1955) and including Vysekal and Henrietta Shore (Canadian/American, 1880-1963) formed the California Progressive Group, a splinter organisation devoted to the fostering of modern art.

For the annual exhibition at the Museum of History, Science and Art they demanded equal space alongside the California Art Club. The situation culminated in a confrontation with a protest committee from the CAC at the museum and chaos was only narrowly averted when the museum acceded to the demands of the California Progressive Group.

Later, in 1922, he became a member of the Group of Eight, a group of painters who sought to express a more radical form of Impressionism in their work. The Eight included Mabel Alvarez (American, 1891-1985), her former teacher John Hubbard Rich (American, 1876-1954), Edouard and Luvena Vysekal, Edwin Roscoe Schrader (American, 1878–1960), Clarence Keiser Hinkle (American, 1880-1960), Henri Gilbert de Kruif (American, 1882-1944) and Donna Norine Schuster (American, 1883-1953). Critic Antony Anderson noted at this time that the group presented “some decidedly modern tendencies”.

A Figure in Shadows

A Figure in Shadows (1927)
by Edouard Vysekal
Sold for $76,000 in 2005. © Bonhams

Vysekal is best known for his bold, figure studies. Unusually his work was acclaimed by both conservative and avant-garde art critics due to his ability to portray draftsmanship in the tradition of the Old Masters whilst simultaneously exploring the potential of modernist abstract colour and form.

Vysekal was a member of the Chicago Academy of Western Painters, Los Angeles, the California Watercolor Society and the Laguna Beach Art Association and exhibited regularly (q.v.). He died in Los Angeles in 1939. The Vysekal Memorial Exhibition was held in his honour at the Los Angeles Museum in 1940.

Exhibitions:

Art Institute of Chicago: 1911, 1912
Palette and Chisel Club of Chicago (founded 1895, renamed the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art 1933): 1912-14
Daniell Gallery, Los Angeles: 1916
Friday Morning Club, Los Angeles: 1916, 1920, 1930
California Art Club: 1916-38
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA): 1916, 1921 (One-Man Show), 1927 (with Mabel Alvarez), 1929 (with Boris Deutsch), 1940 (One-Man Show)
California Liberty Fair, Los Angeles: 1918
Modern Art Workers, Los Angeles: 1919-26
Painters & Sculptors of Los Angeles: 1920-38
Laguna Beach Art Association (founded 1918): 1920s
California Water Color Society: 1921-45
Western Painters: 1922-25
Los Angeles Art Association: 1924
California State Fair: 1926
Chamber of Commerce (Hollywood): 1926
Hollywood Woman's Club (founded 1927): 1929 (with his wife, Luvena Buchanan)
Artists of Southern California: 1930
Oakland Art Gallery: 1932
Public Works of Art Project: 1934
Academy of Western Painters: 1935-38
Vysekal Memorial Exhibition, Los Angeles Museum: 1940

Referenced in:

The American Art Annual, 1917-33
Edouard A Vysekal, Painter by Luvena Buchanan, Czechoslovak Review, June 1924
Two Ironic Romanticists by Sonia Wolfson, Argus, October 1928
Our Artists in Person, No.3: The Vysekals by Arthur Millier, Los Angeles Times, 20 July 1930

Who's Who in American Art, 1936-41

Southern California Artists

Los Angeles Painters of the 1920s

Southern California Artists 1890-1940

Artists of the American West

California Arts and Architecture List

Edouard Vysekal Memorial Exhibition, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Exhibition Catalogue, 1940
Impressionism to Modernism, American Art Review, August 2000
Focus on the Figure, American Art Review, August 2001