December 26, 2025
Local News for a Global Village | www.VoiceSB.com
25
Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery
Oskar Fischinger:
A Deeper Look K
By Kerry Methner / VOICE
ICKING OFF 2026 WITH AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY AN INNOVATIVE ARTIST WHO WAS AHEAD OF HIS TIME, interested in science and yet deeply rooted in the quest to understand the human spirit, Sullivan Goss will host an opening reception for Oskar Fischinger: A Deeper Look on January 3rd from 5 to 8pm. The exhibition, which opens on the 2nd and runs through February 23rd, is meant to bring some balance for an artist who is more known for his movies than his paintings, but who was a true influencer in the West Coast art world as far back as the 1930s.
Vonk traces some of the forces that shaped Fischinger’s work and output, writing, “The three specific passions that drove Fischinger’s development were his continuing interest in visual music, recent scientific discoveries, and new age spirituality. These seemingly distinct subjects are bound together through his lifelong interest in giving expression to the hidden forces behind the world and our perception of them.” Several of Fischinger’s movies are available on YouTube for those who become intrigued with this “pioneer of abstract animation and visual music.” As the exhibition is being prepared and hung, Vonk answered a few questions about it for VOICE readers. VOICE: What delights you about Oskar's paintings?
“In their totality, Nathan Vonk: Besides being beautiful paintings, Fischinger’s paintings are the historical context in which they were evidence of an artist created is particularly who was intensely interesting. When curious about Fischinger made how art, science, these paintings in Los and spirituality Angeles, there were could expand the very few other artists possibilities for who were making human experience this kind of European Translucent Figure, 1964| oil on board and expression. They by Oskar Fischinger modernism, and also demonstrate an even fewer collectors, artist whose abstract visual language galleries, or museums was boundless, and who was deeply that were able to engaged with the biggest questions of understand how his time,” wrote Nathan Vonk, owner of incredible they were. Sullivan Goss, in an essay for a new SG V: Do they convey some monograph, Oskar Fischinger, that will Red and Green Orbit, 1952| oil on of the same playfulness canvas by Oskar Fischinger accompany the exhibit. and creative freedom as
Moving Organisms, c .1959 | oil on masonite by Oskar Fischinger
Vonk: His work seemed to have an aspect of devotion practice to it. Like prayer, meditation, or yoga. He was a very spiritual person, but he was also incredibly interested in the scientific developments of his day, and this combination of interests seems to have been quite unique for painters in LA at this time. V: How did Sullivan Goss come to own or represent the estate?
Vonk: A very generous art collector introduced me to the artist's daughter, and she and I hit it off. I think she liked the fact that we take such an academic, and art-historical focus on the estates we work with. And I think she could tell that I was genuinely passionate about Oskar's work.” V: Congratulations on the book!
Vonk: Because Fischinger's work is in so many major museums, we are hoping to see this book in the gift shops of places like the Guggenhiem and LACMA.
his movies?
Vonk: Absolutely, I think Oskar liked the fact that he had such a profound level of creative freedom in LA. Because the modernist scene there was so new, there was no established dogma about what was and wasn't acceptable. He was experimenting and inventing it as he went along. V: What is the relationship between the films and his paintings?
Vonk: Painting often started as studies for the imagery in his films. And then many of his films are animated through a vast series of paintings that would be used as individual frames. V: What surprises you about his work as you become more familiar with it? Untitled, 1951 | oil on canvas by Oskar Fischinger
Blue Square Clusters, 1937 | oil on canvas by Oskar Fischinger