Theodore Lukits (1897-1992)
             
 

     
   
"Spring Sunset"   11 " x 15 " 
Pastel on Paper
(c. 1924)
(Collection, California Art Club)
 
     A permanent collection of paintings and studio materials from the estate of Theodore Lukits has been formed that will hang in the museum and art academy that will be built by the California Art Club, the Southland’s most venerable arts organization. In 1998, Jeffrey Morseburg, who curated the estate collection, and the artist’s widow, Lucile Lukits, began choosing a broad and representative selection of works from the artist’s estate that would eventually be donated to the California Art Club. The Lukits Collection includes a number of drawings and paintings from the artist’s own tenure at the Art Institute of Chicago, a large collection of his plein-air pastels from the 1920s as well as number of portrait and figurative works from throughout the artist’s career. Before these items have been given to the California Art Club, they have all been properly conserved and framed in a way that is in accordance with the aesthetic choices that the artist himself made during his peak years of his career in the 1920’s and 1930’s. This donation was organized so that there would be a selection of Theodore Lukits’ works on permanent display in Southern California where the artist taught and painted for almost seventy years. It is especially appropriate because Lukits had been honored with a Life Membership in the California Art Club and the revitalization of the California Art Club that occurred in the 1990s was led by Peter Adams, one of Theodore Lukits’ most accomplished students. Now through the auspices of the California Art Club, Lukits’ works will be able to serve as examples of the principles that he advocated for young painters and serve to illuminate the era in which he lived and painted.