Theodore Lukits - Exhibitions of The 1930s

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. 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. 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. 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. One of the younger make-up artists who studied with Lukits was Bill Reynolds, the brother of the Hollywood great Debbie Reynolds.