the Classicist

art in the 20th century is another stream, quieter, often in the shadows, but steadily flowing nonetheless. In that current can be found movements such as Precisionism, the New Objectivity, Metaphysical art, Neo-Romanticism, and a few others less well known. Among those others is Post Surrealism, also called the New Classicism, a school of painting that was born in Southern California in 1934—announced, in typical modernist fashion, by a manifesto—gave rise to some intriguing exhibitions, and ceased to exist as an organized phenomenon by the end of World War II. While Post Surrealism never became a household word, even in the not-always-cozy household of American modern art, it did yield some works of lasting value and marked the careers of the two artists who co-founded it—Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg. Feitelson, a prominent teacher and public figure in the L.A. art world, is better known than Lundeberg, his artistic partner and life partner, but it was in fact she who wrote the manifesto of Post Surrealism, at the young