Theodore Lukits

Theodore N. Lukits

Theodore Lukits at Los Angeles museum, 1937
Born November 26, 1897(1897-11-26)
Timişoara, Austria-Hungary (now Romania)
Died January 20, 1992(1992-01-20) (aged 94)
Santa Monica, CA, United States
Field Landscape Painting, Portraiture, Illustration, Mural Painting
Training Washington University in St. Louis School of Fine Arts, Chicago Art Academy, Chicago Art Institute, Barnes Medical College, Alphonse Mucha
Movement California Plein-Air, American Impressionism
Influenced by Frank Brangwyn, Alphonse Mucha, Karl H. Buehr

Theodore Nikolai Lukits (November 26, 1897 – January 20, 1992) was a California portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of some of the most glamorous actresses of the Silent Film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspired works, figures drawn from Hispanic California and his pastel landscapes have all received greater attention. He studied with two of the American Impressionists from Giverny [1] and so some of his paintings can be described as works of their style of Decorative Impressionism. Lukits began his professional career as an illustrator while still in his teens, but he was also a still life painter, muralist and a prominent teacher who ran the Lukits Academy of Fine Arts in Los Angeles for more than sixty years. He had the reputation of a craftsman who made his own paints from raw pigments, constructed brushes, palettes and designed and carved frames. Lukits was responsible for keeping the "Beaux-Arts" methods of French academic system alive in the western United States and several of his students went on to prominent careers.[2] Works by Lukits are in a number of public collections. The California Art Club in Pasadena has a large body of his work as does the Jonathan Art Foundation in downtown Los Angeles.[3] He was a member of a number of professional art organizations, won many awards in competitions and was a life member of the California Art Club.[4] Lukits has been the subject of a number of solo museum exhibitions since his death and his work has been included in a number of other museum exhibitions devoted to Tonalism and California and American Impressionism.[5]

Contents

Early history

Lukits was born Nicolae Teodorescu in Timişoara, Transylvania, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[6] His father, Theodore Lukits Senior, was a butcher and his mother was a homemaker. He came to the United States when his family immigrated in 1899, when he was two, and he grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.[7] Lukits was a child prodigy and he began formal studies at Washington University in St. Louis School of Fine Arts before he was twelve.[8] His first teacher was Edmund H. Wuerpel (1866–1958). He also studied with Richard E. Miller (1875–1943) in St. Louis, who had returned home from the art colony of Givery and was staying with his parents.[9] Lukits left public school after the 8th grade in order to pursue a career in art, with the full cooperation of his parents. Lukits worked from an early age, first as an office boy and then as an airbrush artist, painting delicate girl's heads on leather.[10]

Education in Chicago

Lukits moved to Chicago when he was fifteen to attend the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. At the Chicago Academy he studied with the painter, illustrator and traveler Carl Werntz (1874–1944) who founded the school in 1902.[11] He also studied with William Victor Higgins at the Academy, the landscape and figurative painter, who later became famous as one of the Taos Ten of the Taos art colony.[12] Lukits began his career at the Art Institute of Chicago with evening, weekend and summer classes because he was unable to enroll as full-time student until he turned eighteen.[13] Lukits studied with a number of instructors at the art institute, but his main teachers and mentors were the American Impressionist Karl Albert Buehr (1866–1952), the society portrait painter Wellington J. Reynolds (1866–1949) and the figurative painter Harry Mills Walcott 1877–1930). Lukits worked under Edwin Blashfield (1848–1936) at some point in his Chicago years, presumably as an assistant on a mural project in the Midwest, but it is not known when.[14] He also studied with the realist painters Robert Henri (1865–1929) Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872–1930) and George Bellows (1882–1925) who were guest instructors at the Art Institute during Lukits' tenure.[15] Another painters Lukits was influenced by was Housep Pushman (1877–1966). He first met the Armenian artist in 1916 in Chicago, where he had an exhibition at the Art Institute of his figurative works and Asian-themed still lifes. During his student days, Lukits shared a studio with the Swedish-born painter Christian von Schneidau (1893–1976). The two artists became friends in Chicago and would later renew their friendship in California where they both would paint portraits of movie stars.[16] He won every major award at the Art Institute including the Bryan Lathrop Traveling Scholarship. During his studies at the Art Institute he paid for his studies by painting illustrations for major publications such as Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post. After his graduation from the Art Institute in 1918, he returned for post-graduate work the following year under Karl Buehr.[17] His last period of artistic study was a special scholarship which enabled him to study and travel with the Czech master of Art Nouveau, painter and Illustrator Alphons Mucha (1860–1939) who was exhibiting his Slav Epic murals in the United States. Lukits also attended Barnes Medical College to study human anatomy.[18]

Professional career

After he arrived in California he rapidly became known for his portraits of early Hollywood figures Theda Bara, Pola Negri, Mae Murray and Alla Nazimova.[19] The portrait Lukits painted of the Mexican screen legend Dolores del Río was exhibited at the premiere of one of her films and reproduced in newspapers in Los Angeles and Mexico City. Lukits began the Lukits Academy in the early 1924 and he continued teaching until his retirement at age ninety. He was a well known plein-air painter, choosing the pastel medium for more than one thousand sketches he did on location in the Sierra Nevada, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert, along the California coast and at the Grand Canyon.[20] In the early 1930s Lukits also did a series of paintings of vaqueros and female dancers that are know known as the Fiesta Suite, as studies for a mural project for Howard Hughes that was never completed.[21] This series of pastel and oil studies depicted many of the horsemen and young Latino actresses who came to Los Angeles to work as riders, stuntmen and extras in Hollywood films. Theodore Lukits has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California, the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California, the Muckenthaller Cultural Center in Fullerton, California and Mission San Juan Capistrano.[22]

Exhibitions of the Roaring Twenties

From the mid-1920s through the early 1930s, Lukits had a number of solo exhibitions in and Southern California. The fall of 1926 may have been his successful season. He had an exhibition at the Southby Salon on Larchmont Boulevard that opened on September 23. The review in the Sunday Los Angeles Times stated "The exhibit was opened on Thursday evening by a reception at which Anita Stewart was hostess. About 100 people attended. The event of the evening was the first showing of the artist's striking portrait of Ethel Wade." [23]

Lukits studied with Richard Miller, Charles W. Hawthorne, Housep Pushman, George Bellows, Robert Henri, Karl Buehr and Wellington J. Reynolds. He won the Bryan Lathrop traveling scholarship from the Chicago Art Institute which took him to Rome.[24] He recently restored the much valued old portrait of St. Francis at Santa Barbara Mission and completed a portrait of Colonel Oliver S. Hershman, ex-owner of the Pittsburgh Press Newspaper. Lukits is a brilliant young painter with real portrait talent and an eye for rich, warm, color." [25]

In November he had a showing in the Salon of the famed Hollywood restaurant the Montmatre Cafe. Owned by Eddie Brandstatter, the Montmatre was the place where film stars and society figures went to see and be seen. It was famous for its dance contests which were invariably won by the young Joan Crawford. Lukits showed his work. which included portraits, landscapes and marines at the Montmatre during the month of November and along with Count Tolstoy and the actress Dolores Del Rio, he was the guest at a pair of receptions.[26]

Exhibitions of the 1930s

In spite of the difficulties of the Great Depression, the Los Angeles art scene still ran at a rapid pace during the 1930s. While sales were slow and artists were forced to drop their prices in many cases, the art organizations still hosted a steady stream of solo and group exhibitions and the commercial galleries that remained in business. Lukits had exhibitions at a number of the premier Los Angeles Galleries during the 1930s. In February 1931, as the Depression deepened, he had an exhibition at the Desert Gallery in Palm Springs, which was beginning to grow as a destination resort. In June he had a large exhibition of landscapes, still lifes and portraits at the Stendahl Galleries, which was arguably the premier Los Angeles Gallery of the era.[27] In 1935 he had a solo exhibition at the Barbara Hotel in Santa Barbara. In 1937 he was invited to participate in a special exhibition at Harriet Day's Desert Inn Gallery in Palm Springs, Twenty Paintings by Twenty Artists that included the work of Maurice Braun, Hanson Puthuff and Maynard Dixon.[28] That same years Harry Muir Kurtzworth curated an exhibition at the Los Angeles Public Library titled Tonal Impressionism with the works of Frank Tenney Johnson, Jack Wilkinson Smith, Alson Clark and Theodore Lukits with a number of moody works by each artist.[29] In the 1930s a number of Hollywood make-up artists studied with Theodore Lukits. The prominent make-up artist Louis Hippe (1909–1967) advocated the study of drawing and anatomy under Lukits in order to understand the planes and facial structure of the human head and how it would appear under artificial light, and a number of other make-up artists followed him to Lukit's atelier in the 1930s and 1940s.[30] One of the younger make-up artists who studied with Lukits was Bill Reynolds, the brother of the Hollywood great Debbie Reynolds.

Marriages

Theodore Lukits met the aspiring artist and actress Eleanor Merriam (1909–1948) in 1931 when she came to study with him.[31] Despite her parent's opposition, a personal relationship developed rapidly. She became one of her husband's favorite models. He painted a well exhibited pastel portrait of her in 1932, a prize-winning artistic oil portrait titled "Gesture" in 1934 and another portrait in 1936.[32] In 1937, the couple eloped to Santa Barbara and were married.[33] In 1940, they purchased a comfortable Spanish-style home on Citrus avenue, just south of Wilshire Boulevard, adjacent the exclusive Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Under Lukits' instruction, Eleanor Merriam Lukits became a fair painter. However, her work was always reminiscent of her husband's because she shared similar props for her still lifes and painted the same models. Additionally, at least in the early 1930s she worked by her future husband's side. He often worked on her pastels and paintings and his bolder, more confident, stroke can be discerned according to his biographer. Eleanor Lukits was outgoing and so she drew her husband into the social whirl of Los Angeles where she proved to be adept at cultivating patrons and portrait sitters. The couple showed their work together extensively and she participated in many of the exhibitions for women artists of the Southland in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1948, as she and her husband were transferring gasoline from one container to another in their basement, the vapors were ignited by a pilot light. Both Eleanor and Theodore were burned, but her internal injuries led to her death in the hospital.[34] Several years later, Theodore Lukits began dating Lucille Greathouse, a Disney animator and also one of his students. They were married in 1952 after a short courtship.[35] Lukits and his second wife lived a quieter social life but they exhibited and were active with a number of Southern California's art organizations in the 1950s and early 1960s.[36] From 1952 to 1990, Lucile Lukits helped her husband run his school and business affairs and her assistance helped put the school on firmer financial footing. After her husband's death, Lucile Lukits took over management of her husbands artwork and estate before passing the responsibility on to his students. In 1997, feeling the effects of Parkinson's Disease, she moved to Utah to be closer to her family. She passed away in Utah in 2003 at the age of ninety-four. There were no children from either of Lukits' marriages.

Late career

The last generation of students that Theodore Lukits taught in the 1970s and 1980s included a number of notable figures. The Plein-Air pastelist Arny Karl (1940–2000) studied with Lukits from 1968 to 1978.[37] The well known artist and longest serving President of the California Art Club Peter Seitz Adams (b. 1950) [38] worked under Lukits' guidance for seven years, from 1970 to 1977 [39] and the western landscape and cowboy painter Tim Solliday b. 1952) worked with him for five years.[40] The art curator, writer and dealer Jeffrey Morseburg (b. 1957) studied with him for several years and went on to become Lukits biographer and to assemble his estate collection.[41]

Other notable students of the 1970s included James Zapacosta, Kalan Brunink, Entera, Art Pastusak, Bridget Duffy, Leonore Rae Smith and Steve Brown.[42] Of these students, Karl, Adams and Solliday went on to work extensively in the pastel medium in Lukits' tradition. In 1990, Lucile and Theodore Lukits, who was then in declining health, donated a large collection of his work to the Jonathan Art Foundation in Los Angeles. This collection, which includes a large selection of his pastels as well as a number of portraits, has been loaned out to museums for a number of the Lukits exhibitions that have been mounted after his death.[43]

Posthumous Exhibitions

Since his death in 1992, Theodore Lukits work has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions at a number of museums in California. His work has also been part of many other museum exhibitions devoted to California Plein-Air Painting and figurative art. In 1998, a traveling show was organized under the auspices of the California Art Club. Titled Theodore Lukits: An American Orientalist, the exhibition was devoted to his Asian-inspired work. It included a number of the decorative portraits that Lukits did of Asian subjects, some of his plein-air pastels with a strong Japanese influence and a few of his still lifes of Asian antiques.[44]

This exhibition, curated by Jeffrey Morseburg and Peter Adams, opened at the Pacific-Asia Museum in Pasadena, California, the organizing venue and then moved on to the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard and finally to the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, where it was combined with some of Lukits' Hispanic-themed works for a new exhibition titled Theodore Lukits: From Mandarins to Mariachis.[45] These exhibitions included many of his high-key, brightly colored works. There was an illustrated color exhibition catalog with essays by Jeffrey Morseburg published in conjunction with the two Asian-themes exhibitions.[46]

Lukits did many studies and portraits of Mexican and Mexican-American sitters, some of which were studies for mural projects. These works were the subject of two different exhibitions at Mission San Juan Capistrano, in 1998 and 1999. The second exhibition titled Theodore Lukits: The Spirit of Old California was centered on what has been called his "Fiesta Suite" a collection of paintings that were studies for a mural of an old California fiesta that was to have been done for Howard Hughes. Held at the Mission San Juan Capistrano Museum in the Old Soldier's Barracks of the historic mission, the exhibition was viewed by thousands of visitors to the mission. It included more than a dozen figurative works, a collection of pastels and some works that were actually painted on the grounds of the missions in the 1920s.[47]

The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art has a notable collection of Plein-Air pastels by Theodore Lukits and two of his students, Peter Seitz Adams and Arny Karl. These have been central to two exhibitions at SAMA, one in 1999,[48] devoted to landscape pastels and the other in 2008, which featured watercolors and pastels.[49]

Mission San Juan Capistrano was the site of another Lukits exhibition in 2001 titled Romance of the Mission which was held in the courtyard of the mission in conjunction with the annual benefit dinner. Paintings and pastels by Theodore Lukits have also been included in a number of the California Art Club's Annual Gold Medal Exhibitions as part of their showings of works by historic members.[50]

Partial Exhibition Record

Posthumous Exhibition Record

Studio Locations

Portrait Commissions

Gallery Representation

Memberships

Public collections

Prominent Students of Theodore Lukits

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Who's Who in American Art 1919–1957 Volumes, also Who Was Who in American Art
  2. ^ Morseburg, Theodore Lukits, CAC Newsletter Articles
  3. ^ See Theodore Lukits. Org web site which has images of many of these works.
  4. ^ CAC Web Site, "Historic Artists of the CAC"
  5. ^ See comprehensive list below under "Posthumous Exhibitions"
  6. ^ See Wikipedia entries for articles on these topics. Lukits family is listed in census records as "Hungarian." Available online on Ancestry.Com
  7. ^ Ancestry.Com, U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization, Department of State Records. U.S. census records reveals Lukits Sr. was a butcher and sausage maker.
  8. ^ Enrollment receipt in archival section of Theodore Lukits. Org web site dates to 1911
  9. ^ Who's Who in American Art, 1940–1941, Lukits Entry, Page 407. Miller's presence back in the U.S. is not well known but established by the 1910 U.S. census which shows him in St. Louis, Ancestry.Com records
  10. ^ Theodore Lukits. Org web site archive, tuition receipts, letters of recommendation
  11. ^ There is now a Wikipedia entry on Werntz. His travel records are available from Ancestry.Com and many references to his teaching career online.
  12. ^ Who's Who in American Art, 1919–1957 Issues have list of instructors
  13. ^ Art Institute of Chicago, Circular of Instruction, 1913–1914,1914–1915, 1915–1916, 1917–1918 list his name
  14. ^ Blashfield delivered the Scammon lectures in Chicago in 1912 and did a number of mural projects in the Midwest
  15. ^ Who was Who in American Art, 1919–1957 and other listed reference works
  16. ^ Theodore Lukits. Org web site has story and photos and Von Schebidau on Wikipedia
  17. ^ AIC Circular of Instruction, 1918–1919
  18. ^ Who's Who, other reference works below list Mucha and Barnes
  19. ^ Morseburg, CAC Newsletter, December, 1998, p. 2
  20. ^ Morseburg, Jonathan Art Foundation Book, 2010
  21. ^ Morseburg, Lukits, CAC Newsletter, December, 1998
  22. ^ Posthumous Exhibitions listed below
  23. ^ Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1926
  24. ^ Lukits was evidently the Prix de Rome representative for the AIC, but apparemnly he used the scholarship money to study the western landscape because WWI had just ended.
  25. ^ Undated 1926 Clipping, Lukits archive
  26. ^ Montmatre Catalogs in Lukits Archive, Theodore Lukits. Org
  27. ^ Stendahl Brochure listed below, records in Archives of American Art. Stendahl represented Guy Rose and William Wendt as well.
  28. ^ Day, Harriet, "Twenty Paintings by Twenty Artists" brochure listed below
  29. ^ Kurtzworth, Harry, Muir, "Tonal Impressionism" catalog listed below.
  30. ^ News Clipping, Theodore Lukits. Org web site
  31. ^ Morseburg, CAC, December, 1998, p. 4
  32. ^ See exhibition list below
  33. ^ Theodore Lukits Reveals Nuptials, April, 1937, scanned clipping in Lukits archive, unpaginated. LAT does not have many old issues online as does NYT.
  34. ^ Eleanor Lukits, Dies of Explosion Burns, Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1948
  35. ^ Morseburg, CAC, December,1998, p. 8
  36. ^ See exhibition list below
  37. ^ Karl's Ask Art Biography
  38. ^ CAC Web Site
  39. ^ See Adams' "Recollections" in The Pastels of Theodore Lukits, Carnegie Museum, p. 4-5 (1991)
  40. ^ See Solliday's "Recollections'" in The Pastels of Theodore Lukits, Carnegie Museum, p. 3 (1991)
  41. ^ See Lucile Lukits (1909–2003), Lukits Academy Tuition Records, 1952–1990, Lukits Archive for records of students, unnumbered. See references below for bibliography of works on Lukits.
  42. ^ Lukits, Luicllle, Enrollment Books 1952–1990, Lukits Archive
  43. ^ See Lucile Lukits (1909–2003), Lukits Academy Tuition Records, 1952–1990, Lukits Archive for records of students, unnumbered. Also web references to many of these artists as students of Lukits.
  44. ^ Morseburg, Jeffrey, Theodore Lukits, An American Orientalist, Exhibition Catalog, p. 1-16
  45. ^ Invitation on Lukits. Org web site
  46. ^ Morseburg, Lukits: American Orientalist catalog
  47. ^ San Juan Capistrano catalogs listed below, also TFAOL website
  48. ^ Tomor, Contemporary Romanticism: Landscapes in Pastel"
  49. ^ "From Charles Burchfiled to Peter Adams" Online PDF
  50. ^ "Romance of the Mission" Program, Mission San Juan Capistrano, p. 1-3

Books and Exhibition Catalog References

Periodical References (Articles and Illustrations)

Miscellaneous References

Website & Online References

Newspapers References

External links