MIDCENTURYLA

This is Nathan vonk for SGTV. Picture Los Angeles in the 1950s. What are the iconic images that come to mind? It's not hard to find images that bring us back to that time and help to solidify our shared understanding of what that time and place looked Thanks in part to beautiful photographs by Julius Schulman, the cutting-edge architecture found in homes by Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra, and Joseph Eichler is a style which we can easily recognize. As is the designer furniture that filled these homes. It is this style which we have come to call mid-century modern. When the painter Richard Haynes moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest in 1941, this aesthetic had yet to have much of an impact. The artisans work from this period shows the heavy influence of social realism in the Ashkahn school that we associate with the Great Depression. As a muralist for the WPA during these years, Haynes had already had an incredibly productive career, winning nine mural commissions around the country. In 1945, after working for Douglas Air during World War II, Haynes took a teaching position at the Chinard Art Institute and continued to compete for and win mural commissions around the country. During the early part of the 1950s, the artist's work developed his unique style of post-Cubus abstraction in a distinctly southwestern palette. It was also at this time that Haynes began showing his work at the Dahlsall Hatfield Gallery, the gallery at the forefront of fostering modernism in Los Angeles. Before leaving Chinard in 1954, Haynes' work had already been exhibited in many of the most important muse That same year, Haynes joined his friend, Millard Cheats, at the Otis College of Art and Design, where he led the painting department for the next two decades, influencing an entire generation of Southern California painters. Between 1958 and 1966, Haynes completed no less than six major public works in the Los Angeles area alone, including two works on the campus of UCLA, and this work entitled Celebration of Our Homeland at the Los Angeles Federal Building. For anyone paying attention to the LA arts scene, Haynes' work would have been impossible to miss. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Haynes' work had as much influence on the visual landscape of Los Angeles as the great architects and designers of the day. Haynes' paintings are quintessentially part of mid-century LA's aesthetic legacy. Richard Haynes, mid-century master, will be on display from April 3rd through June 29th.