OSKAR FISCHINGER (1900-1967)
Fugue / Asymetrical, 1959
OSKAR FISCHINGER (1900-1967), Fugue / Asymetrical, 1959 163515
Space Spiral (a.k.a. "Blue Space"), c. 1956
48 x 36 inches | Oil on canvas
Sullivan Goss is proud to represent the Estate of Oskar Fischinger – a master of early non-objective painting, an inventor of the music video, a pioneer in multimedia immersive environments, and a prophet of both Op Art and contemporary computer-generated motion graphics.
While Fischinger’s contribution to the development of cinema and animation have been well documented in two thoroughly-researched books, OPTICAL POETRY: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger, 2004 by Dr. William Moritz and OSKAR FISCHINGER 1900-1967: Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction, 2012 edited by Cindy Keefer and Jaap Guldemond, the project to properly historicize – and thus celebrate – his contribution to American painting remains ongoing.
In 1921, Oskar joined Dr. Bernhard Diebold for a run-through of a new film called Lichtspiel Opus I [Light-Play, Work 1] by Walther Ruttmann – a 13 minute film of non-objective color effects with a musical accompaniment. Entranced by the work’s possibilities, Fischinger’s life took a decisive turn. Using his engineering background, Fischinger created a machine called a “Wax-Slicing Machine” for expediting the creation of abstract imagery on film. By 1929, Fischinger was a recognized innovator in his field.
In 1935, his animation Composition in Blue won the King’s Prize at the Brussels International Exposition held that year. In 1936, he was hired by Paramount to bring his advanced ideas and techniques to the U.S.
By 1938, MGM released Fischinger’s An Optical Poem – a seven minute, hand painted and hand cut animation of circles, triangles, squares, and comet shapes set to “Second Hungarian Rhapsody” by Franz Liszt. It was screened across the world. It preceded Solomon R. Guggeheim’s Museum of Non-Objective Art by a year and Disney’s Fantasia (on which Fischinger also worked) by two years. Remarkably, it was Fischinger’s 43rd film project.
1938 was also the year that Fischinger showed with Karl Nierendorf in New York. This exhibition exposed Fischinger to Katherine Dreier, – co-organizer of the Société Anonyme with Marcel Duchamp, and to Hilda Rebay, doyenne of the future Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Non-Objective Art (today’s Guggenheim Museum). The Guggenheim, in turn, helped support Fischinger through the War Years with three grants – one of which helped finance his film Radio Dynamics of 1942.
Fischinger’s last major film Motion Painting No. 1 of 1947 followed. In 1949, the film won the International Experimental Film Competition in Brussels. He continued to have important exhibitions at the Frank Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Pasadena Art Museum (today’s Norton Simon) and to show in important group exhibitions at the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Since then, his reputation has grown and grown. Two monographs have been published. His painting was on the cover of a pivotal 1990 exhibition, Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956, and he was given a full essay in the Smithsonian’s book on the subject. Within the last decade his film work has been featured at the Tate Modern and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2017, he was the subject of a “Google Doodle”–a Google home page link celebrating a person’s cultural and technical contributions to the world. It seems that Fischinger’s work was simply too far ahead of its time.
JUST IN TIME FOR A NEW YEAR, a new hope and a harbinger of wished-for continuity, Sullivan Goss kicks off with a main gallery exhibition looking both inward and out. As suggested by its title, Juxtaposed: The Art of Curation in which the very art of curation is central to its end effect. As art presentation dictates, guiding curatorial forces follow a creative collective heart, behind the art on the walls, but this time in a self-conscious way.
The painter and filmmaker Oskar Fischinger has long been a well-kept secret of the midcentury Southern California modern-art scene—itself a rather well-kept secret of the American art world in general. The German-born artist, who was active in Los Angeles from the 1930s through the 1960s, made abstract paintings in the European “non-objective” tradition of Kandinsky, Klee, and Mondrian, but his greatest passion was for abstract film, a genre that he had a large part in inventing.
A FEAST FOR ART LOVERS and one of “Sullivan Goss’s most important exhibitions,” according to exhibition curator Jeremy Tessmer, Drewes/Fischinger/Gordin: The Invention of American Abstract Art has been extended to January 4th. This will give locals and visitors time to discover its sophisticated ensemble of pieces during our long winter holiday.
Comprised of work by three influential, though not universally known artists, the exhibition is the inaugural Sullivan Goss sampling from the Estates of Werner Drewes (1899-1985) and Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) in context with work from the Estate of Sidney Gordin (1918-1996).
Sullivan Goss’ current exhibition The Invention of American Abstract Art, curated by Jeremy Tessmer, explores how abstract art materialized and evolved within the works of Werner Drewes (1899-1985), Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), and Sidney Gordin (1918-1996) after they moved to the United States. During the twentieth century, discoveries in quantum theory, relativity, and cosmic evolution largely shaped artistic attempts to conceptualize the human condition. Although it is widely attributed to its European inception, abstract art sustained formal developments when it spread to the United States in the later half of the twentieth century.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (Compiled by the Center for Visual Music)
1938 Karl Nierendorf Gallery, New York, NY
1938 Philip C. Boyer Gallery, New York, NY
1939 -1940 Stendhal Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1949 Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, CA
1950 Forsythe Gallery, Hollywood, CA
1951 Frank Perls Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
1953 "New Works of Oskar Fischinger," San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA
1956 Pasadena Museum of Art, Pasadena, CA
1963-64 Ernest Raboff Gallery, Hollywood, CA
1965 American City Bank, Los Angeles, CA
1966 Drew Gallery, Pasadena, CA
1970 "Bildmusik," Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA. Reviewed in Art Forum Magazine.
1971 Goethe Center, San Francisco, CA
1971 The Egg and the Eye Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1973 "Oskar Fischinger 1900-1967," Occidental College Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1977 Goethe Center, Montréal, Canada
1981 Gallery 609, Denver, CO
1982 Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1985 "Oskar Fischinger: Experiments with Animation," Cambridge Animation Festival, Cambridge UK
1990 Galerie Kroner, Wiesbaden, Germany
1991 "Oskar Fischinger: Light, Space and Rhythm," Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1993 "Optische Poesie," Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany
1994 Luckman Fine Arts Gallery, California State College, Los Angeles, CA
1998 Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Goethe Institute, Washington DC
2007 "Movement and Spirit," Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis, MO,
2010 "A Fischinger Celebration." Goethe Institut Los Angeles. Organized by CVM. September 23.
2011 "Oskar Fischinger: Paintings," at Peyton-Wright Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico. July 1 - August 3.
2012 "Oskar Fischinger: Space Light Art, A Film Environment," Raumlichtkunst installation at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June-October 2012. Reviewed in New York Times and Artforum
2012-13 "Oskar Fischinger: Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction." EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Co-organized by Center for Visual Music and EYE.
2017-18 Oskar Fischinger: Raumlichtkunst. Weinstein Gallery at SoMA, San Francisco, CA, December 2017-February 2018. Included paintings and animation artwork. Catalog.
2018 "Oskar Fischinger: Paintings from the Permanent Collection." Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
COLLECTIONS
Museum of Modern Art MOMA (Square #1 - 2672, 1934, Motion Painting no.1, 1947)
Guggenheim Museum (Untitled, 1942)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA (Abstraction, 1943)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SFMOMA (Circles in Circle, 1949)
TATE Modern (Untitled, 1952)
Laguna Art Museum, CA (Snow White, Red Circle, 1943 & Finger Painting, 1943)
De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA (Rhythmic Tapestry, 1952)
Smithsonian American Art Museum (Circles, Triangles, and Squares, 1938)
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA (Bird in Flight, 1946 & "1 Part of 'Was Ihr Wollt' or 'How You Like It' by William Shakespeare", 1919 monoprint)
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA (Yellow Brown, 1944 & Untitled, 1940 & Crystals, 1960 & Untitled, 1934 & Illuminated, c. 1959 & Blue Green, 1951 & Angel, c. 1962 & Head, 1946 & Untitled, 1960 & Untitled, ND)
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA (Balls #16, 1964 & Light Area, Motion in Space, 1944)
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (Optical Poetry, 1936 & Magenta Wedge, 1940-1 & Floating No. 2, 1960 & Study for Nirvana, 1965 & Abstraction #22)
The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art, Irvine CA ICMA (Spheres, 1941)
Yale University Art Gallery (Abstraction, 1936) *orginally sold to Katherine Dreier, co-founder of Societé Anonyme with Marcel Duchamp
FILMOGRAPHY
1921-26 Wax Experiments
1923-27Orgelstable (Staffs)
1927Seelische Konstruktionen (Spiritual Constructions)
1927Munchen-Berlin Wanderung (walking from Munich to Berlin)
1929Studie Nr. 1
1930 Studie Nr. 2
1930Studie Nr. 3
1930Studie Nr. 4
1930 Studie Nr. 5
1930Studie Nr. 6
1930-31Studie Nr. 7
1931 Studie Nr. 8
1931 Studie Nr. 9
1934 Liebesspiel
1932 Studie Nr. 10
1932 Studie Nr. 11
1932 Studie Nr. 12
1932Koloraturen
1932Ornament Sound Experiements
1933-34 Kreise (Circles)
1934Ein Spiel in Farben (A Play in Colors)
1934Quadrate (Squares)
1934Muratti Greift Ein (Muratti Gets in the Act)
1934Swiss Trip: Rivers and Landscpaes
1935Muratti Privat
1935 Euthymol Ad: Pink Guards On Parade
1935 Komposition in Blau (Composition in Blue)
1937 An Optical Poem
1941 An American March
1942 Radio Dynamics
1947Motion Paitning No. 1
1952Muntz TV Commercial
1952Stereo Film Test
1957, ca. 1960Motion Painting No. 2 and No. 3
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS (Compiled in part by the Center for Visual Music)
2021DREWES, FISCHINGER, GORDIN: The Invention of American Abstract Art, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara CA
1945 The Museum of Non-Objective Painting (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation), New York, NY
1945 Non-Objective Painting, Fort Worth Public Library, Fort Worth, TX
1947 American Contemporary Gallery, Hollywood, CA (with Jules Engel & Herb Klynn)
1947 "Abstract and Surrealist American Art," Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL
1947 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA
1949 "California Centennial Exhibition," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA
1951 "Contemporary Painting in the United States," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA
1952 "Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA
1959 Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA
1960 UCLA Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1960 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA
1976-77 "Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1982 "L'Art du Cinema Animation," The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1990-92 "Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956." Laguna Art Museum, CA; Oakland Museum, Oakland CA; Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX; Nora Eccles Harrison Art Museum, Utah State University, Logan, UT; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA
1992-93 "Theme and Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde 1912- 1950." Dayton Art Institute, Dayton OH; Phillips Collection, Washington DC; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, IL; Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, TX
2000 "Made in California," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA
2004-5 "Sons et Lumières." Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (animation artwork)
2005 "Visual Music," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (films and animation artwork)
2006-2010 "The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America." Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Philips Collection, Washington, DC; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
2012-2013 "Structure and Clarity," Tate Modern Collection Displays. Raumlichtkunst installation at Tate Modern, London, through May 2013
2015 "Art of Music," San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
2016-17 "Art and Cinema, 120 years of exchange," Caixa Forum, Barcelona and Madrid
2016-17 "Dreamlands, Immersive Cinema and Art," Whitney Museum, New York
2017 "Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim," Guggenheim Museum, New York
2017 "Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California," Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA
2018-19 "First Glimpse, Introducing the Buck Collection." UCI Institute and Museum for California Art. Sept 2018-Jan 2019
2021 "Drewes | Fischinger | Gordin: The Invention of American Abstract Art." Sullivan Goss Gallery. October 2022 - Janusary, 2021
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Millier, Arthur. "Fischinger Still Paintings on Exhibit at Pasadena." Los Angeles Times 30 Dec. 1956.
2. Rosenblum, Gordon. Oskar Fischinger, 1900 - 1967. Fischinger, a Retrospective of Paintings and Films. Curators Gerald Nordland and Gordon Rosenblum. Denver, CO: Gallery 609, 1980.
3. Ehrlich, Susan. "Oskar Fischinger." Turning The Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists, 1920-1956. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1990. 63-67.
4. Lorenz, Marianne. "Oskar Fischinger." Theme And Improvisation: Kandinsky and The American Avant-Garde. Dayton Art Institute, 1992: 159-162.
5. Karlstrom, Paul J., ed. On the Edge of America - California Modernist Art 1900 - 1950. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. 13, 224-228, 232, 238, 283.
6. Knight, Christopher. "First Class Study of Fischinger's Impact." Los Angeles Times 2 May 1998: F1.
7. Moritz, William. Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger. Eastleigh: John Libbey, 2004
8. Karole Vail, ed. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting: Hilla Rebay and The Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009.
9. Diehl, Carol. "Oskar Fischinger, New York, Whitney Museum." in Art in America. November, 2012
10. Keefer, Cindy; Guldemond, Jaap. eds. Oskar Fischinger 1900 - 1967: Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction. Amsterdam and Los Angeles: Eye Filmmuseum and Center for Visual Music, 2013.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Gallery is incredibly indebted to Dr. William Moritz for his lifelong passion project to document and preserve the cultural legacy of Oskar Fischinger as well as to curators like Ilene Susan Fort of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Susan Ehrlich, and Paul Karlstrom of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art for their research and writing about Fischinger’s career. Sullivan Goss also wishes to express its gratitude to gallerists like John Wright Schaefer, Jack Rutberg, Tobey Moss and Herbert Palmer for helping to build the foundation for the artist’s current reputation. The Center for Visual Music is also an excellent resource for scholarly information about the artist’s life and work.
