LA CIENEGA AREA

A group exhibit of painting and sculpture scans an international contingent of artists active earlier in this century in various hybrid forms of Cubism and Futurism. A well-groomed appearance tends to be their chief virtue, in lieu of power or invention.

Best known of the artists on view is the fussily academic Cubist Andre Lhote. The happiest passages in his leaden painting of two sleeping women on the beach (weirdly reminiscent of a famous Courbet) are to be found in the jiggled stripes of a dress and the flipped-up scalloped borders of a tea cloth serving as a pillow.

The one bright spot is the work of Hungarian Hugo Scheiber, whose high-key color, bold patterning and shorthand notation for human physiognomy give images of black musicians playing the European cabarets a terrific bounce and verve.

Mary Swanzy, “the first Irish Cubist,” got bogged down in her quest for an avant-garde style by her essentially narrative, lyrical bent. A vaguely Cubist portrait of a woman (possibly herself) is far too sweet and slow. .

Jais Nielsen, a Danish disciple of modern movements, had the sort of soft-pedalled talent that best expresses itself in commercial art or illustration. His painting of tennis players would have made a smart Vanity Fair cover.

Hungarian Aurel Richter’s garish paintings combine silly movie cliches (lovers in a clinch, a steely-jawed racing car driver) with vague, mentally airbrushed memories of Futurism. (Fine Art Society of Los Angeles, 8006 Melrose Ave., to Sept. 30.)