Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg (1908–1999) was an American painter. Along with her husband Lorser Feitelson, she is credited with establishing the Post-Surrealist movement. Her artistic style changed over the course of her career, and has been described variously as Post-Surrealism, Hard-edge painting and Subjective Classicism.

Early life and education Lundeberg was born in Chicago in on June 24, 1908, the eldest child of second-generation Swedish parents. In 1912 her family moved to Pasadena, California. As a child, she was an exceptional student and an avid reader. Her intellectual aptitude earned her inclusion in a Stanford University "Study of Gifted Children", which looked at the characteristics and development of children who ranked in the top 1% in California schools. During her early adulthood, Lundeberg's inclination was to become a writer.

In her early life as a painter she would paint portraits of herself, mother, and sister.

Career In 1930, Lundeberg graduated from Pasadena Junior College. She enrolled in art classes at the Stickney Memorial Art School in Pasadena, where she met professor and fellow painter Lorser Feitelson. Feitelson's dynamic approach to composition and broad ranging interests in the international art scene inspired Lundeberg. In conversation with Fidel Danieli, as part of the UCLA Oral History Project in 1974, Lundeberg explained, "When Lorser came and began to explain things, to make diagrams and to give us principles of different kinds of construction – light dawned! It was really very exciting."

In the 1930s, Lundeberg was working in both the social realist and post-surrealist styles. Unlike their European counterparts, American Post-Surrealist artists did not rely on random dream imagery. Instead, carefully planned subjects were used to guide the viewer through the painting, gradually revealing a deeper meaning. This method of working appealed to Lundeberg's highly intellectual sensibilities and her engagement with surrealism is present, to varying degrees, in her work throughout the rest of her career.

From 1936 to 1942, Lundeberg was employed by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, for which she produced lithographs, easel paintings, and murals in the Los Angeles area. These murals were removed from the building in the 1970s and are now considered lost.

In 1941, the WPA commissioned Lundeberg to paint a mural at the Fullerton City Hall (now the Fullerton Police Department). This -high, -long, mural is made of petrachrome and depicts the history of the Centinela Valley. Though always based in reality, Lundeberg created mysterious images that exist somewhere between abstraction and figuration. Repeatedly described as formal and lyrical, Lundeberg's paintings rely on precise compositions that utilize various restricted palettes. Paintings from this period employ the idea of "mood entity", a concept in Post Surrealism that was concerned with evoking states of mind, moods and emotional content unique to each work. Lundeberg and Feitelson were part of a loose group of Post-Surrealists that also included the artists Grace Clements, Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, Harold Lehman, Lucien Labaudt, Knud Merrild, and Etienne Ret. During this period, Lundeberg was one of the most prolific painters working in Southern California. Her love of the 15th Century Italian Classicists is reflected in many of these works.

The American band Sonic Youth have a song called "Helen Lundeberg" on their 2006 album Rather Ripped, whose lyrics list the titles of Lundeberg's paintings included in her exhibition Illusory Landscape at Louis Stern Fine Arts.