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LORSER FEITELSON - Biographical data for "Contemporary American Artists"

I was born in Savannah, Georgia on February 11th, 1898. My father, Bramm Feitelson, was born in nothern Courland, then Baltic Russia. My mother's family origin was Belgium, her maiden name Sonia Henrietta Marcel. My father's occupation : business investments.

I grew up in New York City. Because of recurring poor health during my youth, I was privately tutored and perhaps exceptionally encouraged to further my interest in art. Before the age of six I received my first lessons in figure-drawing from my father, who had talent and an enthusiastic interest in art. From the beginning I was unusually exposed to works and reproductions of the masters, and to illustrations in the periodicals which included contemporary art activity. It was my father who taught me the analytical approach to art; this made an indelible impression which has deeply affected my own work and undoubtedly led to my lifelong interest in the theory of art, teaching and lecturing on art. 

I started painting "seriously" over forty years ago - immediately after seeing the famous"Armory Show" in 1913. The unprecedented use of shifting contours in Cezanne and the kinetic paintings by the Italian Futurists and Marcel Duchamp impressed me deeply. The impact of this experience excited my imagination as to the new possibilities of kinetic organization. Until then my whole concern was with organized form-articulations as developed by Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and Veronese. My efforts with "kinetic-organizations" of fragmented, shifting contours, supported by dynamic color lasted until 1920 or 1921; renewed interest in this kind of organization, in a more monumental form, has again found expression some of in my work of the past two years (1957-58).