If It’s Southern California, It Must Be Lalla-Land

When it comes to the small world of artists’ models, Southern California has been Lalla-land for a good part of this century.

By most accounts, Lalla Lezli has posed for painters and sculptors for about six decades, acting as visual symbol of the feminine form as well as creative muse for numerous artists.

The woman known simply as Lalla demurs when it comes to saying exactly how long she’s been a model or her true age, but even she concedes it has been a long time.

“My mother told me to never ask someone their age or how rich they are,” she said during a recent interview from her Los Angeles home. “Anyway, If you don’t feel old, then you’re not really old, are you? I will say this, I’ve been doing this for many, many years. It’s my profession and I love it.”

To recognize this mini-institution, the Sarah Bain Gallery in Fullerton is offering the “Lalla Exhibition,” a collection of dozens of portraits, from the realistic to the abstract, that have been done of the model throughout her career. The show closes April 23.

Gallery owner Sally Waranch said Lalla, who friends say is probably in her 80s, represents a living document of the history of art in this region. Through the paintings, drawings and sculptures the viewer can see how styles have changed.

“She really is something,” Waranch said. “Her sister says she’s been (posing) since her teens, and we have an artist in his 80s who tells us she posed for him 60 years ago. She’s been at the center of a lot of art.”

In a statement for the show, art writer Roberto Caruso gushed that Lalla should be compared to the greatest models of history.

She is, Caruso writes, “in the lineage of other notable models who, for centuries, inspired artists to transform them into classic goddesses, such as Raphael’s Madonna, Monet’s Olympia or Botticelli’s Venus.

“Southern California artists also have produced their share of mysterious odalisques, but through the many renderings of Lalla, it is clear that sensual, eternal portraits that epitomize the beauty of the human body and spirit, start with real, flesh and blood models.”

Lalla herself offers a simpler appraisal of her enduring career.

“From the first day, it just clicked for me. I always had interesting bone structure, but it’s something inside (that the model) has to communicate. Also, you have to be willing to work hard, which I’ve always done.”

And still does. Lalla continues to pose, sometimes in the nude, for artists and art schools, including Otis Parsons and those at USC and UCLA. Several times a week she models for 25-minute stretches with five-minute breaks for usually six hours a day.

Her career began on a whim. A photographer friend wanted to capture Lalla’s image, and she spontaneously agreed. Word-of-mouth spread that she was both patient and physically intriguing. Soon Lalla was in demand. Over the years, she has posed for artists Peter Liashkov, Harry Carmean, Ray Turner, Richard Bunkhall and even actor Peter Falk, whom Lalla described as “not only a great actor, but great with his drawings.”

But what stood out about Falk was his humor.

“He has such wit, it was always fun working with him,” Lalla said. “I’ve posed with him off and on for several years, but he’s so busy with his movie work. . . . He’s nice; he sent me flowers for the opening of this show.”

Developing the kind of rapport she had with Falk is one of the keys to her success, she added. If the artist feels an intimacy with the model, the finished piece is likely to be more expressive.

There are, however, boundaries to that intimacy, at least for her. Lalla explained that artists’ models “sometimes have a bad reputation” for starting love affairs with their clients, something she never did.

“You want me to give you some dirt?” she said, laughing. “Well, all I can say is that this can be a strange business. You say you’re a model and up go the eyebrows, like Wow! People just have these thoughts that models are having affairs with the painters. “As for me, I’ve never mixed business with pleasure. I’ve always had to keep my personal life apart from my profession. But if other models approach it differently, (that’s) fine with me.”

Something else that has surprised Lalla through the decades is how many people are amazed that she poses nude.

“They ask me how I can get up there without any clothes on, and I just tell them that everybody has a body, that there’s no reason to feel ashamed. It really is the greatest thing ever created. . . . I expect to be posing this way forever.”

Though there have been few disappointments in her career, she does have one regret.

In the 1950s, Lalla had an appointment to pose for Salvador Dali, the godfather of Surrealism, while he was staying in Los Angeles.

Lalla arrived on time, but soon learned that Dali wasn’t interested. After inspecting the diminutive model (she’s barely 5 feet tall), Dali said in a mix of Spanish and English that she wouldn’t do.

“The interview lasted about 180 seconds, and he made it clear that he was looking for a tall, long-legged, voluptuous redhead. And that, my dear, is not me.

“I was a little taken aback, but later thought it was quite funny. He was so important at the time, but my impression of this man was a little ego walking very big. But he was so brilliant, I guess that was to be expected.”

* “Lalla Exhibition” at the Sarah Bain Gallery, 214 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton. Free. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ends April 23. (714) 525-8050.