Emerson Woelffer exhibition catalogue for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

QUÉ SIGNIFICA: EMERSON WOELFFER IN THE YUCATÁN AN EXHIBITION AND SALE AS PART OF THE GETTY INITIATIVE: PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: LA/LA

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O P P OS I T E PAG E Emerson Woelffer painting in Pearson Street studio, Chicago, c. 1949 Image by Diana Woelffer

On Influence and Significance

By Peter Loughrey

Qué significa? What is the significance of Emerson Woelffer's time in the Yucatán? To understand what this moment in the artist's career meant to his work, one must only view his oeuvre before, during, and after his time in Mexico. Through extraordinary access to the artist's estate, this exhibition has the rare opportunity to examine the remarkable influences of legendary peers that profoundly affected Woelffer's work for the rest of his career and how these influences changed his visual vocabulary. In a scant few years, Woelffer would leave a teaching position at The Institue of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus led by László Moholy-Nagy); teach the summer fine arts course at Black Mountain College with Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers; visit with Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner; and befriend Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. In between, he spent six months in Mexico in near total isolation from the art world while working on his craft. During this time, his work clearly moves away from the Eurocentric influences of Moholy-Nagy and adopts the more cutting-edge new language of the American-centric Abstract Expressionism.

What was once an homage to the School of Paris—or what was commonly referred to as “Painterly Abstraction”— was now one of the first truly American modern art movements.

Looking back at this early American movement, the great Clement Greenberg summed up Woelffer's work—as well as 30 other artists working at the time—in his landmark 1964 exhibition, “Post-Painterly Abstraction,” thus: “Among the things common to the thirty-one, aside from their all favoring openness or clarity (and all being Americans or Canadians) is that they have all learned from Painterly Abstraction. Their reaction against it does not constitute a return to the past, a going back to where Synthetic Cubism or geometrical painting left off... They are included because... they have a tendency, many of them, to stress contrast of pure hue rather than contrasts of dark and light. These artists also favor a relatively anonymous execution.” This last statement is extremely relevant to Woelffer.

We generally accept, and indeed celebrate, artists who share in a movement from inception, especially when they formally band together with a manifesto replete with declarations of purpose. But what of the Abstract Expressionists? The reality is that, other than a co-operative viewing space in the East Village called The Artists' Gallery, the “Ab-Ex” painters made such a clean break with tradition that even the formality of declaring the movement was disposed of. These were a 3

”I THINK ONE OF THE FINEST AMERICAN ARTISTS TODAY IS EMERSON WOELFFER OF COLORADO SPRINGS. HE IS BRILLIANT”.

O P P OS I T E PAG E Untitled, 1947

—VINCENT PRICE

group of fiercely independant individuals. They were more interested in the physicality of creation than the idea of explaining it; more action and less talk, literally.

Emerson Woelffer spent a lifetime allowing influences to flow through him with unapologetic directness.

However, he never felt comfortable as part of a group and preferred to be somewhat isolated during the active creative process. “I, for some reason, always felt nervous about being where the action is,” he explained, “I get too involved, too emotionally disturbed where things are happening.”

His earliest work in Chicago certainly showed influences from afar. As he admitted in his 1976 oral history interview, “at that point, I was still very much concerned with Picasso and Miró.” In 1948, he was appropriately rewarded for his understanding of the then current trend of following The School of Paris when he won top honors in the Art Institute of Chicago's annual show of the “best artists in Chicago and vicinity.” A grand statement indeed, considering László Maholy-Nagy and Alexander Archipenko were also residing in Chicago at the time. His entry, “Family Group,” won the $650 first prize.

It was in Chicago that fellow professor Buckminster Fuller and painter Frank Verushka first tempted Woelffer and his wife Dina with the possibility of going to the Yucatán

region of Campeche. Woelffer had been determined to proceed there directly except that Fuller convinced him to postpone the trip to teach at Black Mountain College, saying: “Well, it's on your way to Yucatán.” After completing a semester there and readying for the Mexico trip, a last minute invitation to visit Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in New York couldn't be refused. He jokingly recalled, “Well, it was still pretty much on the way.”

These intense few months of interaction with the giants of Abstract Expressionism before being isolated and focused obviously had a great effect on his work. And the pre-Colombian artifacts he would encounter there had an effect all their own. He would later explain to June Harwood: “A spectator might 'see' a tribal mask or other such image in his work, but the intention, of course, is otherwise.” In other words, the viewer's reaction is simply witnessing a subconscious—or automatic—reaction.

After the Woelffers returned from Mexico, his work would never again resemble the somewhat contrived Painterly Abstraction, but would, thereafter be dedicated to automatic subconscious expression. As Woelffer himself admitted, Mexico “...influenced my painting, and also painting (there) turned me on to greater adventures in the primitive arts.” Indeed, Qué significa!

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O P P OS I T E PAG E Mable with Dry Martini, 1947 L E FT Chicago newspaper article, 1948 B E LOW Figure on the Beach, 1947

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Woelffer in the Yucatán

By Mara Kelly

Born in Chicago in 1914, Emerson Woelffer has been called “the grandfather of L.A. Modernism,” having settled in Los Angeles in late 1959 and remained until his death in 2003. Influenced by the principles of surrealist automatism, as introduced to him by Roberto Matta, Woelffer incorporated this into his art, as many Abstract Expressionists of the time did. As he explained, “This is, I feel, my kinship with the surrealist painters. I paint first and think afterwards. Some people think and then paint. I think after I paint.“ These strong ties to surrealism, automatism, and even jazz improvisation — a passion of his — are evident throughout his compositions.

Woelffer’s career paralleled much of the major happenings in the American art world in the early 20th Century. He was accepted by László Moholy-Nagy as an instructor at The New Bauhaus, later called the Institute of Design (I.D.) in Chicago shortly after his service in the WPA Arts Program in 1942. It was there that Woelffer developed a painting style embracing distinct abstract forms and shapes. During that time, Woelffer met Fernand Leger, May Ray, and Roberto Matta, who each had a lasting influence

on the development of his art.

It was at the Institute of Design that Woelffer met Buckminster Fuller, who later invited him to be a part of the faculty at Black Mountain College in North Carolina for the summer session of 1949. Founded in 1933, Woelffer joined a roster of artists who, throughout the years, included the likes of Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell. At Black Mountain, Woelffer continued his interest in abstract forms; however, unlike his paintings at the I.D., the ideology at Black Mountain encouraged him to loosen up his formal painting manner.

Leaving North Carolina later in the fall, Woelffer, accompanied by his photographer wife Dina, traveled up the coast to visit Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, on Long Island. Woelffer

”IT IS A DISGRACE, WHEN SO MANY SECOND-RATE PAINTERS ARE WELL KNOWN IN NEW YORK, THAT AN ARTIST LIKE WOELFFER SHOULD REMAIN RELATIVELY UNKNOWN.” —ROBERT MOTHERWELL

O P P OS I T E PAG E Emerson Woelffer posing for Hugo Weber sculpture, Chicago, 1951 Image by Diana Woelffer

B E LOW Untitled (Bucky Fuller Series), 1949-1959

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”HE DIDN’T GO OFF AND ARGUE WITH THE UNIVERSE, BUT INSTEAD STAYED AFTER CLASS AND TAUGHT YOU TO ‘GO WITH’ A CERTAIN BLUE OR ‘GO WITH’ A PARTICULAR RECTANGLE WITHOUT EVER SAYING IT, AND THAT MADE HIM A MASTER OF ABSTRACT COMMUNICATION.”

O P P OS I T E PAG E Untitled, 1950.

—ED RUSCHA

remembered Pollock telling him one night that “It makes no sense to take a stick with some hairs on it and drip it in the paint,” referring to the kind of painting Woelffer along with everyone else at the time was doing, and which Pollock felt detracted from the expressiveness of the work. Woelffer liked the spontaneity, directness, and feeling of Pollock’s action painting, and later incorporated this influence into his work.

From there, the Woelffers left the United States and moved to the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico where they rented a house in the small fishing village of Lerma in the state of Campeche. For the next six months they lived a simple life, making friends with the local fishermen, who kept their sails on the property to dry, while the Woelffers worked on their respective arts.

The Woelffers enjoyed the simple lifestyle. There was no running water, only a well that they shared with the community, providing the locals with fresh drinking water in exchange for homemade tortillas.

The fishermen would also give them fresh casson (baby shark) and pulpo (octopus) to cook. It was here that the Woelffers discovered and began to collect pre-Columbian objects and artifacts, both from

archaeological digs and as gifts from the locals, which he added to his collection of African and New Guinea art. Woelffer’s surroundings influenced his art from this period, as evidenced by the vivid colors and groupings of figures seemingly sporting headdresses featured in his paintings.

Woelffer described his working methods during this period as such: “I went and bought a hammer and some nails. I opened the canvas up, and I nailed canvas on every wall in the house. And I’d go around each day painting a little on each canvas, and this is how I did my painting.“ He used linen canvases obtained from trading a painting to one of his students at Black Mountain College, and used paint colors acquired from artist Ramon Shiva, who compounded his own Casein paint as he was dissatisfied with commercial colors. Thus, many of Woelffer’s paintings exuded a vividness of color.

Due to his ability to paint every day and thoroughly focus on his work, he was able to refine his vision away from the influence of acquaintances such as Motherwell, Pollock, and de Kooning. No longer were his paintings concerned with a defined subject matter, but instead focused more on the abstract expressionist theme of a nonobjective process, a

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RI GHT Emerson Woelffer in living room with tribal figures, Los Angeles, c. 1960.

Image by Dina Woelffer

O PPOSITE L EFT The Hours Passed, c. 1950 O PPOSITE R IGHT Facing Left, 1950

turning point in his evolution that allowed his paintings to take on a feeling of liberation. Nevertheless, Woelffer kept his grounded theme of incorporating the figure within his works, with many of his Yucatán paintings and drawings exploring the figure’s verticality. Critic Gerald Nordland wrote, “He painted with strong contrasting colors on sized canvases, developing vertical abstract elements, vigorously formed with loaded brush and decisive gesture.“ Reflecting on his time spent in Mexico, Woelffer would later muse, “It was beautiful. Six months later, I felt it time to leave, go back to humanity again, to Chicago.”

The experience would remain a lasting influence.

During the course of the next decade Woelffer worked and taught in Chicago, Colorado Springs and Forio d’Ischia, Italy, eventually migrating to Los Angeles where Woelffer was offered a new teaching position.

New to Los Angeles, the Woelffers immediately gathered a West Coast circle of contacts and friends.

He began teaching at the progressive Chouinard Art Institute in 1959. Known as a strict academic drawing and animation center that fed the Walt Disney Studios, in 1961 it merged with the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to form the California Institute of the Arts.

Woelffer began showing his new paintings at the Paul

Kantor Gallery in Beverly Hills along with Richard Diebenkorn, Ynez Johnston and others. Woelffer was immediately plunged into the middle of the L.A. art scene. Los Angeles gave Woelffer the opportunity to meet visiting artists who came through the city, meeting Man Ray for the second time, Yves Klein, and Marcel Duchamp. Woelffer would teach many future notable artists, including Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Joe Goode, Nob Hadeishi, Roy Dowell, and Ed Ruscha — who would later say that Woelffer had a particularly strong influence on his work. In 1964, critic Clement Greenberg included three of Woelffer’s works in his groundbreaking exhibition, “Post-Painterly Abstraction,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a show praising the newly acclaimed painters of the period. While continuing to exhibit in New York at the Poindexter Gallery, Woelffer was invited to participate in a number of other shows throughout the Los Angeles area including the Pasadena Art Museum, the La Jolla Art Center, the Santa Barbara Museum, the David Stuart Gallery, the Jodi Sculler Gallery, and the Wenger Gallery. Finally, beginning in the late 1980s, he exhibited at the Manny Silverman Gallery where his final commercial gallery exhibition took place before his death in 2003.

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”WOELFFER, AMERICAN AS ONE CAN BE, WAS AS LITERATE ABOUT MODERN ART AS ANY AMERICAN WHOM I HAD ENCOUNTERED …

MOREOVER, THE DEGREE THAT HIS OWN WORK COULD BE CLASSIFIED BY ‘SCHOOLS,’ HIS WAS ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM.”

O P P OS I T E PAG E Untitled, 1949

—ROBERT MOTHERWELL

In 1974 Woelffer decamped from the California Institute of the Arts (which had shortened its name to “CalArts” in 1964) and accepted a position to chair the painting department at Otis College of Art and Design, where he stayed until his retirement from teaching in 1989.

Throughout his time in Los Angeles, Emerson Woelffer experimented with many different mediums and themes. However, Woelffer’s paintings from the 1980s and '90s are reminiscent of his earlier work and his self-discovery in Mexico. Although Woelffer’s later style increased in reductive abstraction, he returned to and continued the motifs of verticality and his purposeful gestures and brushstrokes, while always valuing the carefree act of painting.

He has been described as radical, inspirational, and a born painter, Robert Motherwell called him “as literate about modern art as any American whom I’ve encountered,” thus assuring Woelffer’s place in the heart of Abstract Expressionism. He remains an embodiment of the movement, and a great influence on generations extending to today.

1 Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter, “The Master of L.A. Modernism.” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1998

2 “Emerson Woelffer Oral History” (transcript), interview by Joann Phillips (Los Angeles: Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977), 93 3 ibid

4 “Oral History Interview with Emerson Woelffer, 1999, March 26th,” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

5 “Emerson Woelffer Oral History” (transcript), interview by Joann Phillips (Los Angeles: Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977), 63

6 Ruscha, Edward, Emerson Woelffer: A Solo Flight, November 16 December 28, 2003, California Institute of the Arts REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles; catalogue pg. 13

7 “Emerson Woelffer Oral History” (transcript), interview by Joann Phillips (Los Angeles: Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977), 64

8 Borger, Irene, “Emerson Woelffer’s Primitive Icons,” Architectural Digest, Vol. 45, no. 12, December 1988, pgs. 86-96, pg. 90

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O P P OS I T E PAG E Emerson Woelffer outside of Frontenac Street studio, Los Angeles, 1961 Image by Dina Woelffer

Awake in a Dream

By Doug Roberts

I like to tell first-time visitors to Southern California that Los Angeles is a big beach town. Located on a coastal alluvial plain dotted by wetland marshes to the west and south, the proximity to the ocean brings only a modest shift in seasonal temperature; mild winters, warm summers. Los Angeles will always give you a nice day, but it falls on you to make the most of it.

moniker would guarantee flowing water in future years in the minds of those faithful who wished it so. A few seasons later, eleven families arrived with the intention to live permanently below the fork establishing a small pueblo sobre el rio, usurping the river’s name from cartographer’s charts drawn the previous decade. Soon after, the simpler “Angels” shorthand stuck as news of the settlement spread.

In the mid-16th century the first European to sail along the coast of California was from Portugal, representing a waning empire of sea navigators.

But it was a 17th century Spaniard who got off his boat and met the Tongva tribe during an expedition through Southern California, bringing his language and poetry. The Los Angeles of the 18th century actually started high up on the plain, away from the beach and next to the hillsides where winter rains filled a natural south-flowing river that could be dammed, and the fresh water utilized during the summer. The river came through a break in the hills, draining out of a larger, warmer valley behind and to the west. Straight north however, the river branched into a dried-out river bed, an arroyo secco, that would trickle with winter rains, and therefore a less reliable water source. The wet river to the west was given the name, El Rió de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, and perhaps the more pious

The allure of a place called Angels has remained in the mind of romantics in the centuries since. Many first-time visitors are captured by its magic, never to leave again. And so it was almost two hundred years later in 1959, that Emerson Woelffer and his wife Dina found their new home together on the top of a hillside beyond the north fork next to the arroyo secco. By now, the Woelffers had traveled widely, not only across and around North and Central America, but also Europe, including their most recent life on an island in the Mediterranean by the coast of Italy.

Los Angeles marked a final constant by ensnaring the couple for the remaining decades of their lives. For them, the allure of this poetic destination secured fresh roots for the continuation of a creative journey that would finally blossom and solidify Woelffer’s singular artistic voice.

I remember a relatively hot morning in the late spring 17

O PPOSITE PAGE Untitled, 1950 RI GHT Emerson Woelffer home studio storage, 2003 Image by Doug Roberts

of 2003 when I was driving a borrowed car down the Hollywood Freeway toward the junction of the Pasadena Freeway near that fork in the L.A. river. I loathe the Pasadena Freeway. It is L.A.'s first “limited access parkway,” a 1940s experiment in road-building designed to accommodate the vast expanse that Los Angeles had grown into.

It was cut into the arroyo secco with its curves and gullies following a natural, well-traveled path to the upper north valley that had been in use since the late 18th century. The problem is, at automobile speeds, those blind curves and hidden views of the landscape ahead makes any trip in something other than an ox cart worrisome.

It was a couple of months after Woelffer had passed away, when I was tasked with a visit to his mid-century modern hillside home to take inventory of what remained.

Tracing the old parkway path that Woelffer motored along to the very exit turnout he would have used, allowed me to mirror his 4-decade routine. As I turned up the hill, another century-old Los Angeles landmark loomed above.

The Southwest Museum of the American Indian hovers majestically near Woelffer’s doorstep.

While the museum holds a cache of early Los Angeles and Spanish pueblo artifacts, it includes

items attributed to the Tongva and Chumash tribes. The relationship of this historic archive to the other varied interests of Emerson Woelffer would soon be known to me.

The Woelffer house is a post and beam classic. Its driveway juts out at street level toward a western view, the house supported on stilts into a sloping hillside. There was an early model sports car covered in a tarp beneath the open carport. The age of unclipped ivy and shrubbery disguised the gated way in. I am greeted at the front door by Marilu Lopez, Woelffer’s third wife — after Dina passed away in 1990 — many years his junior, she was key to his physical and mental survival during his last decade. She brought a hint of the romantic Los Angeles past into the aged heart of Woelffer. We had met previously at Woelffer’s last art opening at the Manny Silverman Gallery in 2000 while he was still spry enough to espouse on automatic abstraction. She silently sipped her Perrier nearby. I was unaware on this day, but she was scouting me for the role of “dumpsterdiver” as she was about to introduce me to a summertime of work that lay below the house, and would cement a daily collaboration shared over lunch. Their living room was simple with open beams and windows in the pediment, a

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O P P OS I T E PAG E Interior, Emerson Woelffer studio wall, Los Angeles, c. 1965 Image by Diana Woelffer

L E FT Untitled ceramic sculptures, c. 1960

low-slung sofa by Florence Knoll, a leather club chair and ottoman by Charles & Ray Eames, a white-painted brick fireplace that wrapped the corner to the sliding glass door opening onto the deck with its wide view of the vast Los Angeles valley long-ago named to honor King Ferdinand of Spain. There were large prints by Robert Motherwell and Joan Miró hanging on two walls that described a perfect room lifted from a copy of Domus magazine. But the real surprise for me, standing there on that late May morning, was the extensive collection of African and Oceanic art. I was not aware of this tangential interest by the Woelffers, a deeply researched history of acquiring so much material in all scales, periods, and media. Every corner of the house—skinny walls, door headers, and mantle space—became a pedestal to showcase the unique carvings, ersatz and authentic weaponry, weavings, headdresses, masks, and totems from cultures that simultaneously spoke to some of the influences of Woelffer’s own work. I looked at Marilu in amazement. She shrugged, as I’m sure she too felt a similar emotional jaw-drop on her first exposure to this trove. What could easily qualify as a wing of the Southwest Museum, resided here on the opposite bluff of the same hill top.

Marilu was now alone. She eagerly prepared a cup of coffee, happy to have the visitor. She showed me around the house and where Emerson liked to spend his days, and where it was most easy for him to eat or draw. During the last two years of Woelffer’s life, visits to the studio below had ceased. Woelffer was constrained to the use of a walker and later a wheelchair. With the macular degeneration of his eyesight and physical mobility curtailed, drawing materials were brought upstairs to him. Black Strathmore paper and white oilstick became the final method by which he could explain the images still residing inside his mind and seeking articulation.

Through a kitchen door exiting the side of the house, Marilu led me down a stairway to a lower level work space that Woelffer had built beneath the main living room. The studio door opened to reveal a room quietly abandoned but intact with every pencil, brush, book, magazine, and sketch left where it was last touched. It is here that he continued his art-making practice for over 4-decades; painting, drawing, making sculpture from clay and entertaining visitors with musical instruments, jazz records, drinks, and discussions embracing a bohemian life mapped by art and philosophy wandering deep into the 21

O PPOSITE PAG E Untitled, 1993 RI GHT Untitled, 1999

late evenings falling over the makeshift sitting area of one corner. It was a beautifully cluttered reliquary hermetically sealed with the final canvas still resting on its easel. Was it finished? I wondered. There were four or five others in the same macula-inspired color pallette, the same outstretched-arm scale, leaning and stacked on an adjacent wall. One was hanging as if to inspire the thoughts of the next. Did the physical ability of an 80-year-old end with these large, mostly black paintings? Did those final late drawings made on the lap of his wheelchair in the living room above extend the same continuing dialogue with mark and surface? I loved what I was looking at. I was thrilled with the slight variation of a Woelffer new to me, and perhaps new to others who had followed his now seven complete decades of a life making art.

Two things happened that morning—my enthusiasm for the wonder and magic of what was uncovered behind the door just opened, and my simple and very appreciative taste for a tuna sandwich on toast with a slice of tomato grown in the garden. Marilu decided to make me her best friend for the summer that followed.

My own mind was now awake in the present, surrounded by a history dreamily lived by Emerson Woelffer. Although only a few decades old, the history stretches back in a timeless way, the arroyo secco traveled by ox cart explained in visual pictograms, abstracted figures, red and green paint, black dots. Two hundred years ago, fifty years ago, it didn’t matter, for at that moment Woelffer had stopped, and everything in this room explained who he is, who he was. I was there to simply put it in order. My reconciliation was the final tribute, to place in a chain what came first, second, and last; to set about the timeline of the remaining work that Woelffer had so carefully brought along, saved, wrapped-up, and stored away for me to discover once again.

He spoke over my shoulder every day; keep these early drawings together, put those paintings from the 1940s over there, I can’t believe I saved those lithographs I printed so long ago in Chicago, but aren’t you glad I did? Do you like them?

A dozen summers later, the kismet of that particular adventure now informs my own dreams making short the elongated history where time compresses everything into brevity, while never shortchanging the effort due a lifetime of fulfillment.

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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION AND SALE Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA) and the Estate of Emerson Woelffer have teamed up in an on-going partnership to promote the estate and legacy of artist Emerson Woelffer. This partnership will include the management and sale of the artist’s estate in future LAMA auctions, private treaty sales, and exhibitions including participation in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. Proceeds from sales will benefit the Scholarship Fund of Otis College of Art and Design.

with remnants of each earlier experience.

Woelffer’s work and practice are uniquely ‘L.A.’ It is in the special laboratory that is Los Angeles that Woelffer thrived, and it is particularly appropriate that his work be seen here in the city and be represented by LAMA to benefit Otis College of Art and Design.

Emerson Woelffer (1914-2003) taught at Otis College of Art and Design for nearly twenty years, and remained active with the college until his death in 2003. The sale of works by the artist will directly benefit the cause Woelffer dedicated his life to: arts education. Woelffer was a professor and mentor to some of the most influential contemporary artists who emerged from Southern California. Artists such as Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Charles Arnoldi, and Joe Goode all studied under Woelffer in the early years of their practices.

The Scholarship Fund of Otis College of Art and Design provides vital scholarship funding to many Otis College students who are promising young artists and designers who would be unable to complete their education without this support. Established in 1918, Otis College offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a wide variety of visual and applied arts, media, and design. Core programs in liberal arts, business practices, and community-driven projects support the College’s mission to prepare diverse students to enrich our world through their creativity, skill, and vision. As Los Angeles’ first professional art school, visionary alumni and faculty include MacArthur and Guggenheim grant recipients, Oscar awardees, and design stars at Apple, Anthropologie, Pixar, Mattel, and more.

The renowned Creative Action program has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for Community Engagement, and the Otis Report on the Creative Economy is a powerful advocacy tool for creative industries. The College also serves the Greater Los Angeles Area through compelling public programming, as well as year-round Continuing Education courses for all ages.

The estate of Woelffer mimics the same evolution of the artist’s life. Early works feature a very traditional, painterly style influenced by his time of classical study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Works from the time surrounding Woelffer’s period at Black Mountain College can be seen in context with the practices of Cy Twombly, Elaine de Kooning, and Deborah Sussman. From there the artist moved to the Yucatán in Mexico, where his compositions appear to draw from the traditional, local art of the region. But, it was during his years practicing in Los Angeles that Woelffer truly synthesized his experience of traveling and education to his unique style: compositions of abstract expressionism, infused

OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN

B E LOW Venice 1, 1992

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Exhibition Check List

Shoemaker

Swanda

Mable with Dry Martini

Untitled

1946 Oil on canvas Signed lower right 28 x 24 inches

1947 Oil, roofing material, sand on canvas Signed lower right 35.5 x 27.25 inches

1947 Oil, roofing material on linen Signed and dated lower right 36 x 30 inches

1947 Oil, enamel on canvas Signed and dated lower left 40 x 36.75 inches

Time Figure

Figure on the Beach

Untitled

1947 Oil, enamel, roofing material on linen Signed and dated lower right; signed, titled, and dated verso 44 x 34 inches

1947 Oil, sand on canvas Signed lower right 16 x 28 inches

1948 Oil on Masonite Signed lower left; signed and dated verso 30.5 x 29.25 inches

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

c. 1948 Black crayon transfer drawing on buff paper Unsigned 11 x 8.5 inches

c. 1948 Red crayon transfer drawing on black paper Unsigned 12 x 8.75 inches

c. 1948 Black and gray transfer drawing on taupe paper Unsigned 12 x 9 inches

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

1949 Ink on paper Signed and dated in pencil lower right 17 x 22.125 inches

1949 Ink on paper Signed and dated in pencil lower right 17 x 22.125 inches

1949 Crayon on paper Signed and dated in crayon lower right 19 x 25.125 inches

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Exhibition Check List, continued

Untitled

Untitled (Bucky Fuller Series)

Untitled (Bucky Fuller Series)

1949 Casein and ink on Strathmore paper Signed and dated in ink lower left 23 x 28.75 inches

1949-1959 Casein and ink on Strathmore paper Signed and dated ”’49” bottom left; Signed and dated “’59” top right 23 x 29 inches

1949 Casein and ink on Strathmore paper Signed and dated bottom left and top right 23 x 29 inches

Untitled

Untitled

c. 1950 Oil, enamel on fleck board panel Unsigned 30 x 24 inches

c. 1950 Oil, enamel on fleck board panel Unsigned 30 x 24 inches

Untitled 1949 Oil on fleck board panel Signed lower right; signed and dated verso 35.5 x 28.25 inches

Untitled

Untitled

The Restless Being

1950 Oil on Masonite Signed and dated lower right 36 x 30 inches

1950 Oil on Masonite Signed and dated lower right 31.75 x 26.25 inches

1950 Oil on Masonite Signed and dated lower left 24 x 17.875 inches

Untitled

Untitled

Facing Left

The Hours Passed

c. 1950 Blue crayon on Japanese paper Signed in pencil lower right 21 x 14.5 inches

c. 1950 Red crayon on Japanese paper Signed in pencil lower right 21 x 14.5 inches

1950 Duco and spray enamel on plywood Signed and dated in pencil lower right, additional notes verso 32.875 x 11.75 inches

1950 Oil, sand, wood chips on panel Signed and dated lower left 42.75 x 13 inches

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Exhibition Check List, continued

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

1949 Oil on Masonite Unsigned 24.25 x 17.75 inches

1949 Oil on Upsome board Unsigned 34.75 x 17.5 inches

1993 Acrylic and oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 60 x 48 inches

Untitled (Chair Series)

Untitled (Chair Series)

Venice 1

1994 Acrylic and oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 48 x 36 inches

1994 Acrylic and oil on canvas Signed and dated right center edge 48 x 36 inches

1992 #11 of 20 3-color lithograph Signed, numbered, and dated in pencil lower margin 32.5 x 24.75 inches

EXHIBITION AND SALE

PETER LOUGHREY

CLO PAZERA

September 18-29, 2017 10am to 5pm daily (PT)

Curator Peter@lamodern.com

Fine Art Specialist Clo@lamodern.com

SHANNON LOUGHREY

JOE ALASCANO

Managing Director Shannon@lamodern.com

Shipping Joe@lamodern.com

CAMILLA JOHNSTON

PEJMAN SHOJAEI

Marketing Camilla@lamodern.com

Cataloguer Pejman@lamodern.com

CAROLINA IVEY

KATIE CAPE

Client Services Manager Carolina@lamodern.com

Client Services Katie@lamodern.com

CONTRIBUTORS

S P E C I A L T H A N KS

MARA KELLY

MATTHEW KUTZIN

Assistant curator

Custom Framing Service

SUSAN EINSTEIN

SUSAN POLLACK

Photographer

Otis College of Art and Design

DOUG ROBERTS

ROY DOWELL

Co-curator

Executor, Estate of

LOCATION

Los Angeles Modern Auctions 16145 Hart Street Van Nuys, CA 91406 323–904–1950 LAMODERN.com OPENING RECEPTION

September 25, 2017 5pm-9pm Light refreshments served

Emerson Woelffer Generous in-kind support of Optium Museum Acrylic provided by Tru Vue, Inc. and Valley Moulding and Frame 31