"View From Atop" Painting

An American School painter whose prolific career spanned eight decades, Kornfeld (1915 – 2001) helped forge a new style referred to by art critics as “California Modernism.” Born in Great Falls, Mont., Kornfeld trained at Los Angeles’ prestigious Chouinard School of Art with Palmer Schoppe, who became a lifelong friend. Kornfeld established his own, uniquely modernist aesthetic, becoming well known for his loose, flat brushstrokes—transforming simple boats and other landmarks into geometric, cubist forms—and his bold and interpretative use of color. Early in his career, he began producing his own pigments to attain some of the unique colors and hues that became one of his calling cards. A seasoned traveler who considered the outdoors his studio, the Hollywood, Calif.-based Kornfeld journeyed to China, Sweden, France, Greece, England, Mexico, Canada and throughout the U.S., painting in remote areas as well as villages and cities. For months on end, he settled into a community to extract its spirit and flavor. In England, he followed the Thames River from its mouth to its source and once spent a year traveling with a well-known circus to capture on his canvases the highs and lows of circus life. The California coast was a lifelong passion for Kornfeld, which he painted extensively over the years from north to south. “Just when I think I have painted every inch of the California coast, I find some exciting inch I’ve missed,” he once mused. As colorful as his artwork, the redheaded artist—who had a true joie de vivre—always painted in a hat and ascot and his paintings were “happenings,” says his wife, Alene “Sam” Kornfeld, who traveled with him.