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Oskar Fischinger I
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
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Circles in Circle, oil on masonite, stereo painting, 12 x 12"
each, 1949
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The problem
with Fischinger is that he has not been looked at. This centennial
exhibition offered a chance to remedy the problem. Works from the '20's
and '30's display the master hand seen in his films. Later works
subsume hand and eye into architecture. The extraordinary Small Wave
(1940) is a marvel among masterpieces.
The close kinship with Albers and Klee and Ernst is evident. From early
Abstractions to later color studies at the core of Southwestern
painting, Oskar Fischinger's work is consistent and of great
significance. Works from the end of the '30's like Musical Notes
and Sound and Passing are cellular identities later
reconsidered as such, in the manner of Magritte's Classical Surrealism or
Fischinger's own cinema.
Again, it will be noted that Fischinger's work at MGM was subtly repaid with
a major derivation from some 1940 Abstractions (and from films made
still earlier) in the well-known Star Gate sequence of Kubrick's 2001: A
Space Odyssey, released a year after Fischinger's death.
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Squares (2658), pencil and tempera on paper, 10½ x 12”,
1934
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