PASADENA, CA.- The Los Angeles art scene takes center stage at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Pasadena in an expansive and unique exhibition entitled Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy, running through August 29.

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The exhibition brings into focus Pasadena’s outsized and yet seldom addressed role in L.A.’s recognition as a major international art center. L.A. has the buzz! Despite the Pasadena area’s large community of artists, art schools, and its art museums that rival the finest institutions in America, what the broader Pasadena area has lacked over these many decades was a sustaining “gallery scene” that complimented the art exhibited in those institutions. Even Pasadena’s most consequential artists rarely exhibited in Pasadena galleries.

Since its move to Pasadena, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts–among L.A.’s longest established galleries–has charted that absence. Taking a deep dive into the exhibition histories of these local art institutions proved revelatory as Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy offers paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by nearly 60 artists from the gallery’s holdings–comprising the 70 works in this exhibition–all for sale. Each work in the exhibition is accompanied with a label noting provenance and the year in which museum(s) presented the artist’s exhibition.

While not intended as a treatise on art history, the revelations and timeline anecdotes in the exhibition are surprising, perhaps none more so than the inclusion of Alexander Calder in the exhibition, having lived in Pasadena in 1907-1909, just blocks from the Rutberg gallery’s location. Calder’s father created a basement studio for young “Sandy” where he made drawings and objects crafted from wire, and other materials. Attending the Tournament of Roses and seeing horse drawn chariots made a considerable impact and may well have seeded his lifelong interest in the circus–most famously, creating Calder’s Circus in 1926.

Each work in the exhibition can offer a surprise. One of the most widely known images in contemporary art is the photograph by Julian Wasser, of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) playing chess with the nude Eve Babitz on the occasion of Duchamp’s now legendary 1963 retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. This is pictured on a wall label of two works by Duchamp’s older brother, Jacques Villon (1875-1963), a significant artist in his own right who showed at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1966, and included in Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy.

The exhibition features a wide range of early-20th century and contemporary artists: Karel Appel, Emil Bisttram, Morris Broderson, Hans Burkhardt, Alexander Calder, Jose Luis Cuevas, Jules Engel, Claire Falkenstein, Lorser Feitelson, Oskar Fischinger, Llyn Foulkes, Sam Francis, Patrick Graham, Mark Steven Greenfield, Frederick Hammersley, George Herms, Peter Krasnow, Rene Magritte, Andre Masson, Jim Morphesis, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Alison Saar, Elise Seeds, James Strombotne, Mark Tobey, Gordon Wagner, Ruth Weisberg and Jack Zajac.

The extraordinary range of contemporary, modern and old master exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum–before and following Duchamp’s 1963 exhibition–is exampled by a work by the important French etcher, Jacques Callot (1592- 1635), shown at the museum in 1961 and 1964. In 1965 the museum presented an exhibition of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1751-1756). Fine examples of both artists are included in the Rutberg Gallery exhibition, as is a recent acquisition by Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Goya has been presented at the Pasadena, Norton Simon, and Huntington Museums.

A notable work in the exhibition, and exhibited for the first time, is a recently re-discovered 1887 oil on canvas, Bouquet of Flowers, by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904). Also shown are two exquisite original lithographs; one depicting his sisters embroidering, and one inspired by a scene from a Wagnerian opera. The three works serve as a retrospective of sorts as they exemplify the three distinct aspects of the artists’ body of work. Fantin-Latour is represented at the Norton Simon Museum collection with an exceptional painting of flowers. The Pasadena Art Museum presented two Fantin-Latour exhibitions in 1953-54 and 1970.

Among other notable standouts in the exhibition is Hans Burkhardt’s large 1948 painting, Pasadena Bridge; a well-known icon of the city, typically portrayed in a realist manner. In contrast, Burkhardt (1904-1994) depicts the Colorado Street Bridge in his surrealist, expressionist manner reflecting the monumental bridge’s provocative history–“the suicide bridge”–in what is surely its most compelling depiction. In 1957, the Pasadena Art Museum presented a Hans Burkhardt mid-career retrospective exhibition.

Other early modern artists in the exhibition include Edgar Degas, James McNeil Whistler, Honore Daumier, Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Max Klinger, Pierre Bonnard, Eduard Vuillard. Georges Rouault, Alexander Archipenko, Kathe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Paul Klee, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Morgan Russell, Marc Chagall, Alfredo Ramos Martinez and Diego Rivera.

In these times when art galleries increasingly focus on contemporary and emerging artists, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts is a singular presence offering contemporary art in such historic context. Historic relevance doesn’t necessarily correspond to dollar value, and that too will surprise visitors as evidenced by the works in different media included in Pasadena: L.A.’s Art Legacy–especially when the news is filled with hundred-million-dollar art sales.


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