WESTSIDE / VALLEY : Figuratively Speaking, Weisberg’s Series Shows Painting, Italian Style

Italy has been a continuous source of inspiration for artist Ruth Weisberg since she was an 18-year-old student at the Academia di Belle Arti in Perugia many years ago.

Last year at this time, she was ensconced in a studio on the top floor of the American Academy in Rome, in the middle of a five-month stay made possible by a Fulbright Scholarship and a Visiting Artist Residency at the academy.

There, Weisberg, a professor of fine arts at USC who works primarily in painting, drawing and printmaking, had “one of the great views of the world, and the unbroken time of being able to work at any time, day or night,” she said. “In my experience, it was paradise.”

From that splendid opportunity has come “Sisters & Brothers,” her radiant, richly textured series of 15 very human figurative paintings, drawings and prints on view at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts. Aspects of Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture and the light and color of Italy’s landscapes permeate the compositions. They are created with mixed media, including oils, pastels and powdered pigments, and tools such as combs, rags and razors.

The warmth these works exude for their subjects and the surroundings in which they were made envelop viewers and carry them away from the frenzy of urban Los Angeles. The collective story of “Sisters & Brothers,” Weisberg said, stems from but is not confined to the biblical story of Jacob, Esau, Leah and Rachel.

“I knew when I left Los Angeles that the genesis of the narrative was that biblical story,” she said. “But all of my work deals with past, present and future--continuities in people’s lives, relationships to each other. Things that transcend time, place and culture.

“In Western culture, particularly in the 20th Century, the emphasis has been on mother-daughter, father-son and Oedipal relationships. But there is a huge amount of energy between siblings--competition and reconciliation.”

Using her college-age daughter, Alicia, and her niece, Susannah, as models, Weisberg completed the female images in Italy. The male figures, based on her son, Alfred, and his friend, Daniel, were done after she returned to Los Angeles. Her intent was not to create portraits, but to “invest the figures with life,” she said.

“Caryatid,” her first figure study, refers to the female figure used in architecture as a column. Weisberg said she seeks the “reclamation of the female voice or the female side of the story.”

“First Brother” stands before an Etruscan wall reminiscent to Weisberg of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. It is a Roman wall that forms the background of “Nel Giardino.” The sensuous monotypes “Dreamers” and “Dreamer Alone” convey all kinds of pleasant possibilities for the subjects and for viewers.

Accompanying these works is a maquette of Weisberg’s huge work in progress, the culmination of the “Sisters & Brothers” project. It will contain 14 paintings, much like the works in the gallery, in a suspended architectural steel structure.

“The piece itself brings everybody together, stretching to take in opposites,” she said. The whole project is “a synergy of my interest in a sense of space, both indoor and outdoor, and also the interior narratives.”

Her aim was to achieve the effect of Baroque architect Francesco Borromini, who created “a sense of architecture as well as the element of transformation,” she said, “the lifting up of structure as well as letting light in.”

“Ruth Weisberg: Sisters & Brothers,” is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, through June 30 at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, 357 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. Call (213) 938-5222.

ON THE RUN: Beatrice Findlay presents a mood-filled, atmospheric view of our urban existence in “Traces . . . of Urban Culture,” an exhibit of paintings at the West Los Angeles City Hall Gallery. Running figures emerge from most of her very abstract, intensely colorful oil and sand works, some of them enhanced with collage elements.

On first glance, one sees these runners as joggers, out on the street and in the park for exercise. Further study suggests that some of these people may be on their way out of town.

“L.A. Runner” includes scraps of pages from a Thomas Bros. map book. “Urban Landscape II” sports fragments of a newspaper business section and the headline, “800 Reasons to Leave.” Yet, the landscapes of “Urban Landscape V” still prove alluring, with shimmering gold and silver tones.

“I use layers of colors and forms, and frequently use collage elements to further layering of form, color and content,” Findlay writes. “I want the work to reveal itself over time rather than all at once, and create the effect where additional forms, meanings and emotions can be experienced on subsequent viewings.”

“Beatrice Findlay: Traces . . . of Urban Culture,” is open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, through July 23 at West Los Angeles City Hall Gallery, 1645 Corinth Ave., West Los Angeles. Call (213) 237-1373.

CANDID CAMERA: Thomas C. Keyes was employed at Los Angeles’ Union Station from 1934 to 1974. In 1956, he was assigned to work the relief shift Saturdays at the information desk in the ticket rotunda. To provide breaks from the routine, he set up a hidden camera and photographed unsuspecting patrons at the desk. He did it for two years, in fact.

During the next decade, from 1968 to 1972, his hidden camera caught amusing faces and situations at another counter, in the stationmaster’s office.

The Stephen Cohen gallery, working with Paul Christopher, a professor and archivist at USC, has paired photographs of almost identical subjects or themes from Keyes’ two long “photo sessions.” These revealing juxtapositions, culled from hundreds of photographs, are on view in the exhibit, “Thomas C. Keyes: Los Angeles Union Station 1956-1972.”

Among the 11 pairs are parents with children, men in suits and single women. While each photograph is an engaging reflection of its time, what makes the exhibit especially interesting is the immediate opportunity it gives viewers to see the results of the passage of time.

Without any intent other than entertaining himself, Keyes, now in his 80s, documented some of the extraordinary changes in people’s attitudes, appearance and lifestyles that resulted from the events of the ‘60s. Most obvious in these juxtaposed images is the loss of inhibitions that took place during the decade. They have been replaced by experience.*

“Thomas C. Keyes: Los Angeles Union Station 1956-1972,” is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, through July 10 at Stephen Cohen 20th Century Photographs, 7466 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. Call (213) 937-5525.