Arny Karl
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Arny Karl (birth name: Arnold Helmut Karl) (July 31, 1940 - February 15, 2000) was one of the key artists in the early stages of the California Plein-Air Revival, which started in the 1980s and continues to this day. Along with Tim Solliday (b. 1952) and Peter Seitz Adams (b. 1950), Karl helped revitalize the use of
pastels A pastel () is an art medium that consists of powdered pigment and a binder (material), binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, and a pan of color, among other forms. The pigments used in pastels are ...
to paint outdoors or
en plein air ''En plein air'' (; French language, French for 'outdoors'), or plein-air painting, is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look. The theory of 'En plein ai ...
, as the French described regarding the practice of working directly from nature. Karl was a student of
Theodore Lukits Theodore Nikolai Lukits (November 26, 1897 – January 20, 1992) was a Romanian American portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of glamorous actresses of the silent film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspir ...
(1897–1992), who was a prominent California Impressionist and the best known Early California painter to have worked in
pastel A pastel () is an art medium that consists of powdered pigment and a binder (material), binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, and a pan of color, among other forms. The pigments used in pastels are ...
. His work has been included in a number of museum exhibitions, is represented in a number of prominent public and private collections and has been the subject of a number of curatorial essays.


Early life

Karl was born in
South Tyrol South Tyrol ( , ; ; ), officially the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol, is an autonomous administrative division, autonomous provinces of Italy, province in northern Italy. Together with Trentino, South Tyrol forms the autonomo ...
, Italy to an Austrian father, Anton Karl (1899–1984) and an Italian mother, Rosa Maria Adami (1911–1966). His father was a minister and a writer, but it was his mother who encouraged Karl's artistic development through her own interest in design and the arts. The Karl family moved frequently, first to
Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
, then to Rome and finally to
Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...
, where Karl grew up and, as a student, was fascinated and awed by the art of the
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
. Karl enjoyed the Italian countryside and was always drawn to nature as a subject. In 1961, he emigrated to the United States and settled in
San Gabriel Valley The San Gabriel Valley (), sometimes referred to by its initials as SGV, is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, with the city of Los Angeles directly bordering it to the west and occupying the vast majority of the southeastern ...
, just east of Los Angeles, where his sister was living after her
immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...
into the United States. Initially, like many new immigrants, Karl worked at a variety of different jobs but because of his artistic talent, Karl enrolled at
Pasadena City College Pasadena City College (PCC) is a Public college, public community college in Pasadena, California. It was founded in 1924 as Pasadena Junior College. History Pasadena City College was founded in 1924 as Pasadena Junior College. It originally o ...
to study commercial sign and
scenic painting Theatrical scenic painting is a discipline within theatrical production that includes creating scenery or backdrops by adding textures and depth. It encompasses a range of techniques, including landscape painting, figurative painting, '' trompe- ...
, which he felt would enable him to pursue a practical career that would still involve art.


Commercial art career

To earn a living, Karl found employment in the outdoor advertising industry. In the 1960s, Los Angeles, with its tremendous
urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted ...
, had a large
billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
industry and large, colorful billboards towered over the streets and freeways. In that era most of the boards were still hand painted and were essentially large
mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...
s that were painted in vast studios, or on site, by artists on
scaffold Scaffolding, also called scaffold or staging, is a temporary structure used to support a work crew and materials to aid in the construction, maintenance and repair of buildings, bridges and all other human-made structures. Scaffolds are widely u ...
s. Initially, Karl was hired as a 'helper' or apprentice at Foster & Kleiser, a large Los Angeles outdoor advertising firm that is now part of
Clear Channel Outdoor Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. is a multinational corporation focused on outdoor advertising. The company is based in San Antonio, Texas. Together with JCDecaux, it is one of the largest outdoor advertising companies. History Founding ...
. He mixed paints and assisted the more experienced artists, while he learned the technique of completing vast paintings under a strict deadline. Karl quickly climbed up the union ladder and was soon painting his own large billboards for Foster & Kleiser and then for Pacific Outdoor Advertising. Like many commercial artists, he found the lack of creativity in
commercial art Commercial art is the art of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. Commercial art uses a variety of platforms (magazines, websites, apps, television, etc.) for viewers with the intent of promo ...
frustrating and wanted a career as a fine artist, but realized he would need further training. Fortuitously, Bernardo "Barney" Sepulveda, a senior co-worker at Foster & Kleiser, introduced Karl to the iconoclastic figurative painter and Early California pastelist Theodore Lukits. Known as a staunch traditionalist, Lukits' own work and teaching career helped preserve the ideals and methods of the late-19th-century French ateliers and academies. Karl immediately recognized and respected Lukits' knowledge and mastery of pastel and oil landscapes, formal portraits, still lifes, and anatomical drawing and knew he had found a teacher and mentor.


Personal life

Arny Karl was married to the teacher Lee Kietz on June 7, 1969. The couple lived in
Rancho Cucamonga Rancho Cucamonga was a Ranchos of California, Mexican land grant in present-day San Bernardino County, California, given in 1839 to the dedicated soldier, smuggler and politician Tiburcio Tapia by Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. The gra ...
, beneath the
San Bernardino San Bernardino ( ) is a city in and the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 census, making it the List of ...
Mountains that Karl often painted. The Karls had no children and were divorced April 15, 1982. Later, Karl had a long relationship with a woman that he referred to as his wife, Katherine "Kay" Karl, who survived him, but there does not seem to be a record of a formal marriage and there were no children from their relationship. He had a strong, masculine appearance and he was eccentric and colorful in appearance and actions. Karl usually wore paint-splattered clothing and has been described as "looking like he just emerged from the studio", which most often was the case. He could be secretive about his art work, seldom sharing his paintings with anyone except his closest artist friends, who he felt would understand them. In his later years, he was wary of outsiders and reclusive enough that few visitors ever were allowed access to his home. In spite of a generally retiring nature, he developed close friendships with a number of his co-workers in the billboard industry and several of his fellow art students. In his later years, Karl worked in a drafty studio with a complement of cats that was adjacent to his ramshackle home. He was reluctant to see doctors and this quirk contributed to his health issues. He died in a hospital in Ontario, in San Bernardino County, California, after a lengthy illness.


Artistic education

After an introduction from the billboard painter Bernardo "Barney" Sepulveda, Arny Karl entered the
Hancock Park Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The park's destinations include the La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, which displa ...
atelier An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or vi ...
of Theodore Lukits (1897–1992), the Lukits Academy, in 1968. At that time painters like R. H. Ives Gammell (1893–1981) in Boston and Lukits in Los Angeles were two of the few fine arts teachers whose instruction was based on the ideals and techniques of the 19th century French
École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...
. This type of instruction is now known as the "
Atelier Method An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or vi ...
." The Beaux-Arts method had evolved over hundreds of years from the Renaissance through the 19th century and was brought to perhaps its highest level of refinement by Parisian masters like
William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French Academic art, academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classicism, classical subjects, with a ...
(1825–1905),
Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Léon Gérôme (; 11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academic painting, academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living art ...
(1824–1904) and
Leon Bonnat Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fro ...
(1833–1922). Lukits, who had been teaching since 1924, was a respected California portrait, landscape and still life painter whose work was popular with the film community. He was an award-winning graduate of the
Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
where he had studied with a host of Parisian- and European-trained painters including
Alphonse Mucha Alfons Maria Mucha (; 24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist. Living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, he was widely known for his distinctly stylized ...
(1860–1939), Edmund H. Wuerpel (1866–1947),
Edwin Blashfield Edwin Howland Blashfield (December 5, 1848October 12, 1936) was an American painter and muralist, most known for painting the murals on the dome of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC. Biography Blashfield was born i ...
(1848–1936), Karl Albert Buehr (1866–1952), Wellington J. Reynolds (1865–1949),
Richard E. Miller Richard E. Miller (March 22, 1875 – January 23, 1943) was an American Impressionism, American Impressionist painter and a member of the Giverny Colony of American Impressionists. Miller was primarily a figurative painter, known for his paintin ...
(1875–1943),
Charles Webster Hawthorne Charles Webster Hawthorne (January 8, 1872 – November 29, 1930) was an American portrait and genre painter and a noted teacher who founded the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899. He was born in Lodi, Illinois, and his parents returned to Maine, ...
(1872–1930) and Robert Henri (1865–1929). Lukits passed on the accumulated knowledge he learned in his years at the Washington University School of Fine Arts, Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago to his students, who began by "drawing from the antique" which meant doing charcoal or graphite portraits of marbles and plaster casts of ancient Roman and Greek statuary. These studies taught the students to understand "values" which are the tonal gradations of light and shadow, applicable to working under artificial lighting conditions in the studio or out of doors under the natural light of the sun or moon. Advancement in a traditional atelier is based on mastery rather than an artificial quarter or semester system, so Karl moved from working from plaster casts to simple still life set-ups only after his instructor was satisfied with his work. Eventually he began to work in color, painting still life set-ups under the colored lights that Lukits used to simulate conditions an artist would find out of doors. As the years passed under Lukits' guidance, Karl also began attending Lukits' anatomy and life drawing classes. Karl studied with Lukits for an entire decade while he supported himself in the field of commercial art and he concluded his studies in 1978.


Plein-Air painting career

From the time he was young, Arny Karl had always loved the outdoors and when he entered the atelier of Theodore Lukits, it was the elderly painter's large collection of Plein-Air Pastels that made the deepest impression on him. While Lukits was no longer working out of doors, he explained the techniques he used in his works of the 1920s to Karl and simulated conditions of natural light in his studio for his students. By the late 1960s, Karl was working out of doors, painted in the foothills of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains. He brought his works back to the Lukits atelier for the older artist to critique and his steadily work advanced and improved. By the mid-1970s, Peter Seitz Adams (b. 1950) and Tim Solliday (b. 1952), two younger painters who were interested in working out of doors, had entered the Lukits atelier. Karl, who had already been working out of doors for a number of years, served as their early mentor, helping them learn the techniques of working directly from nature. Together the three painters worked painting the stands of Eucalyptus along the Southern California Coast, working in places like St. Malo Beach, where the Adams family had their beach house, the
wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...
s at
Batiquitos Lagoon Batiquitos Lagoon is a coastal wetland and estuary located between southern Carlsbad and Encinitas, in the North County region of San Diego County, California. The lagoon itself consists of 610 acres with a drainage basin of about 55,000 acres. ...
and
Laguna Beach Laguna Beach (; ''Laguna'', Spanish for "Lagoon") is a city in Orange County, California, United States. Located in Southern California along the Pacific Ocean, this seaside resort city has a mild year-round climate, scenic coves, and environ ...
. Karl, Solliday and Adams also made longer sketching trips to the High Sierras,
Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
,
Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, with small portions extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U ...
and the
Canadian Rockies The Canadian Rockies () or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost part of the Canadian Cordillera, w ...
. These three painters worked almost exclusively in pastel and dedicated themselves to championing that medium as a method ideally suited to capturing the rapidly changing natural conditions that an artist encountered out of doors. Karl also painted in Europe the entire year of 1971, working in the
Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...
, Germany, Italy and Greece. He usually worked in small sizes when he painted from nature, from to and then worked up larger paintings in pastel or oil in his studio. Karl held his Plein-Air pastel works closely, seldom exhibiting them or showing them to anyone except his fellow artists, a practice he learned from his teacher and mentor, Theodore Lukits. He saw the pastel work as his reference material for larger, more ambitious works and they served as a form of visual memory, so he seldom wanted to let go of them. In large part because of Karl's influence, by the late 1970s, a number of painters were working out of doors in the Plein-Air Pastel tradition that artists like Theodore Lukits and William Louis Otte (1871–1957) had established in the 1920s.


Professional career

About the time Karl finished his academic studies with Theodore Lukits he began to exhibit his work professionally. He sold his first works to the veteran Los Angeles dealer Howard Morseburg (b. 1924), a relationship that began because of the dealer's long friendship with Thedore Lukits. These early. less mature works were done in oil, "worked up" from his pastel studies. They were brightly colored paintings depicting vivid sunrises and sunsets, broadly painted with little detail. According to Morseburg, because of the intense colors, the paintings did not sell well and after working with Karl for a number of months, the business relationship faded. Karl also began to work with Doug Jones, another veteran dealer who had the Jones Gallery in
La Jolla, California La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood in San Diego, California, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. The climate is mild, with an average daily temperature o ...
. Jones encouraged Karl and purchased and sold a number of his paintings including both figurative and landscape works in oil and pastel. Both Morseburg and Jones have cited Karl's eccentricity and unreliability as an impediment to the development of his artistic career in the 1980s. Karl began working with Trailside Galeries in
Scottsdale, Arizona Scottsdale is a city in eastern Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and is part of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Named Scottsdale in 1894 after its founder Winfield Scott (chaplain), Winfield Scott, a retired Chaplain Corps (United States ...
, a large western gallery, in the mid-1980s, but because of his infrequent visits to Arizona, they were never able to sell his work steadily. It was not until the early 1990s, when he began working with Jeffrey Morseburg, Howard Morseburg's son, that his work began to be exhibited and sold steadily. While he seldom sold his pastel studies early in his professional career, by the mid-1990s, his dealer convinced him that his most personally revealing works were the ones done from nature and that the revival of interest in California Impressionism meant that there was a much greater appreciation for Plein-Air paintings. Morseburg began to market and advertise the works of a number of "Contemporary Plein-Air Painters" with Karl's works advertised and shown along with those of Peter Seitz Adams, Tim Solliday and the aging landscape painter Richard Rackus (b. 1922). Morseburg Galleries also hosted a number of large pastel exhibitions with Karl's work featured prominently. It was from these pastel exhibitions that the collector Sean Sullivan began his collection of pastels of the western American landscape that would later form the core collection for the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art. Phoebe Faulkner, one of the premier collectors of the works of contemporary California Impressionists, also purchased many works from Morseburg's exhibitions. In the 1990s, Karl also began to paint medium-sized and large works based on his pastel studies and these works were sold by Morseburg Galleries and exhibited at Jones & Terwilliger Galleries in
Carmel Carmel may refer to: * Carmel (biblical settlement), an ancient Israelite town in Judea * Mount Carmel, a coastal mountain range in Israel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea * Carmelites, a Roman Catholic mendicant religious order Carmel may also ...
, California. Patricia Terwilliger of Jones & Terwilliger, was responsible for the sale of Karl's largest work, a painting of the Carmel Coast to a Pacific Grove collector. With Morseburg's help, Karl began to exhibit his work with the revived and strengthened California Art Club and his Plein-Air pastels were included in the annual Gold Medal Exhibition as well as the museum shows ''Treasures of the Sierra Madre'' and the ecologically-themed exhibition ''California Wetlands'' both originating at the
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the laws, elements and phenomena of the physical world, including life. Although humans are par ...
.


Late career and posthumous recognition

By the late 1990s, Karl began to experience health problems and was diagnosed with an advanced case of
diabetes Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the cells of th ...
. He had problems with his eyesight, including severe cataracts that interfered with his ability to paint and his artistic production ceased for months at a time. After learning how to treat his diabetes and having eye surgery, Karl rallied for a time and was able to paint once again. However, by 1999, Karl's health began to decline once again and he died in February 2000 from complications from congestive heart failure. Since his death, Karl's work was the subject of one solo posthumous exhibition titled The ''Color of Mood, the Pastels of Arny Karl'' at the Morseburg Galleries in 2005. Karl's works have also been included in a number of exhibitions in public venues. A number of Arny Karl's pastels have been donated to the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art which is located on the grounds of St. Francis University through the auspices of the Sean and Margaret Sullivan fund, the latest of which was donated in 2008. Sean Sullivan was one of the founders of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (SAMA) and a passionate collector of Plein-Air pastels by Californian and Western American painters, both historic painters like Theodore Lukits and contemporary artists such as
Peter Seitz Adams Peter Seitz Adams (born August 27, 1950) is an American artist. His body of work focuses on landscapes and seascapes created en plein air in oil or pastel as well as enigmatic figure and still-life paintings. He is noted for his colorful, high-k ...
and Gil Dellinger. Three of Karl's works were exhibited in SAMA's 1999 exhibition titled ''Contemporary Romanticism: Landscapes in Pastel'' and again in the 2008 Exhibition titled ''From Charles Burchfield to Peter Adams'' in 2008. Additional gifts to the Southern Alleghenies Museum's pastel collection are planned. One of Karl's largest works "Windswept Sierras", has been promised to the California Art Club for its permanent collection.


Assessment and oeuvre

Arny Karl's professional career was relatively short, no more than twenty years. In that time Jeffrey Morseburg, his dealer and fellow student of Theodore Lukits, estimates that he painted about 400-500 plein-air Pastels and about 100-150 oil paintings, so his artistic oeuvre was very limited. He was famously eccentric and difficult, so relationships with dealers were seldom steady. According to Morseburg's essays, Karl's earliest pastel works from the late 1960s and early 1970s were "blocky" with bold strokes of color. As his pastel works matured, the strokes of pastels became almost imperceptible, as he began to "paint" with his fingers. Karl's pastel works of the mid-1990s consisted primarily of foothill scenes, often of California Oaks or Eucalyptus. Some of his later pastel works could be quite detailed, in spite of the artist's eye problems. ''Sierra Autumn, Big Sur Overlook and Mono Lake'', all of which were shown in public exhibitions, are all examples of these detailed pastels. Karl's early works in oil were thinly painted, with little impasto and boldly colored, evidently too boldly for many collector's tastes. His later oils could be more thinly painted or thickly brushed examples of California Impressionism. Most of these works relied on imprecise brushwork and were painted in a cool palette. Scenes of the Central California Coast and the High Sierras predominated in the works of Karl's last decade. Art authorities such as Michael Tomor, former Chief Curator of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art or art curator Jeffrey Morseburg, describe Karl as a "romantic" or "lyrical" painter because of his "moody" subjects and curvilinear compositions. In his 1999 exhibition catalog Tomor stated that "Jeffrey Morseburg, Lukits' biographer, believes Karl to be inspired by Lukits' pastels as well as the works of
Caspar David Friedrich Caspar David Friedrich (; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romanticism, German Romantic Landscape painting, landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti ...
(1774-1840) and
J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbu ...
(1775-1841). His ''Blue Moment'' and ''Pink Moments'', plein-air pastels of the Sierra Mountains, convey the sublime and awe inspiring aspects of nature."Michael Tomor'', Contemporary Romanticism'' While Karl's artistic oeuvre was small, because of his influence on a number of younger painters, strident advocacy of plein-air painting and the pastel medium and presence in several important public and private collections his influence is still being felt.


See also

*
California Art Club The California Art Club (CAC) is one of the oldest and most active arts organizations in California. Founded in December 1909, it celebrated its centennial in 2009 and into the spring of 2010. The California Art Club originally evolved out of The ...
*
California Plein-Air Painting The terms California Impressionism and California Plein-Air Painting describe the large art movement of 20th century artists who worked out of doors (''en plein air''), directly from nature in California, United States. Their work became popular i ...
*
American Impressionism American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth. The style is characterized by loose ...
*
California Tonalism California Tonalism was art movement that existed in California from circa 1890 to 1920. Tonalist are usually intimate works, painted with a limited palette. Tonalist paintings are softly expressive, suggestive rather than detailed, often depic ...
*
Tonal Impressionism {{nofootnotes, date=July 2010 Tonal Impressionism was an artistic style of "mood" paintings with simplified compositions, done in a limited range of colors, as with Tonalism, Tonalist works, but using the brighter, more chromatic palette of Impressi ...
*
Decorative Impressionism Decorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Carl Frieseke, one of the members of the ...
*
Theodore Lukits Theodore Nikolai Lukits (November 26, 1897 – January 20, 1992) was a Romanian American portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of glamorous actresses of the silent film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspir ...
*
Peter Seitz Adams Peter Seitz Adams (born August 27, 1950) is an American artist. His body of work focuses on landscapes and seascapes created en plein air in oil or pastel as well as enigmatic figure and still-life paintings. He is noted for his colorful, high-k ...
* Tim Solliday


Notable works


Museum exhibitions

* ''From Charles Burchfield to Peter Adams: Watercolors and Pastels from the Permanent Collection'' Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, Pennsylvania, March 21 - Sept 14, 2008; exhibited: ''Pink Moment'', ''Blue Moment'', ''San Gabriel Peaks'' * ''Contemporary Romanticism: Landscapes in Pastel'', Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, Pennsylvania, April 4 - May 30, 1999; exhibited: ''Pink Moment, Blue Moment, San Gabriel Peaks'' * ''Treasures of the Sierra Madre'',
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the laws, elements and phenomena of the physical world, including life. Although humans are par ...
, May 28 - August 30, 1998; Muckenthaller Cultural Center, Fullerton, California, September 12 - October 30, 1998 * ''California Wetlands: Paintings of California Endangered Species and Protected Wetlands'', Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, April 13 - September 1, 1996; exhibited: ''Mono Lake'' * ''86th Annual California Art Club Gold Medal Exhibition'', Arcadia, California, Spring 1996; exhibited: ''Windswept Sierras'' * ''88th Annual California Art Club Gold Medal Exhibition'', Arcadia, California, June 14–22, 1998; exhibited: ''Sierra Autumn'' and ''Big Sur Overlook''


History of professional representation

* Estate Representation, Jeffrey Morseburg, 2000–present * Morseburg Galleries, West Hollywood & Los Angeles, California, c. 1990–2000 * Jones and Terwilliger Galleries. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, c. 1994 * Trailside Galleries, Scottsdale, Arizona, c. 1982–1985 * Jones Gallery, La Jolla, California, c. 1980–1990 * Howard Morseburg Galleries, Los Angeles, California, 1980–1985


Notes


References

* Merrell, Eric, ''Historic Artists of the California Art Club'', 2010 Online Biographies * Rice, Ruth, Melding Two Into One, Art Exhibition Combines Pastels and Watercolors, The Tribune Democrat, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, April 8, 2008 (Article on Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art Exhibition, From Charles Burchfield to Peter Adams with Karl's works) * Morseburg, Jeffrey, ''The Color of Mood: The Pastel Landscapes of Arny Karl'', 2005 Exhibition Catalog Essay * Dunbier, Lonnie Pierson, The Artist's Bluebook, 2005 * Morseburg, Jeffrey, Theodore Lukits: An American Orientalist, Exhibition Catalog, Pacific Asia Museum, 1998 * Bellah, Suzanne, The Pastels of Theodore Lukits, Exhibition Catalog, Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, California, 1991 * Morseburg, Jeffrey, Arny Karl, Biography for the Art Dictionary, Ask Art, 2004 * Morseburg, Jeffrey, ''The Landscapes of Arny Karl, a Critical Assessment'', 2000 * Social Security Administration, California Death Index, 2000 * Tomor, Michael, ''Contemporary Romanticism: Landscapes in Pastel'', Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, April 4 - May 30, 1999, Exhibition Catalog * Zilmer, Rolf, ''California Art Club 87th Annual Gold Medal Exhibition'', 1997, Exhibition Checklist * Southwest Art, ''Redbook, Artist's Price Guide'', Western American Art, 1997 * U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 2


External links


Website of Arny Karl

Arny Karl's Summary Page on Ask Art, Online Art Dictionary

California Art Club, Roster of Historic Artists


* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110614054130/http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa547.htm Traditional Fine Arts Online: Contemporary Romanticism, Landscapes in Pastel, April 4- May 30, 1999, Preview of Exhibition at Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art]
Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Museum Press release, SAMA-Loretto to Display Works from the Permanent Collection, 2008

Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, 2008 Annual Review

California Art Club, Special Exhibitions, Treasures of the Sierra Nevada and California Wetlands, Exhibitions



Website devoted to Theodore Lukits, Karl's Teacher and Mentor

Morseburg Galleries (Karl's Longtime Dealer) website

Los Angeles Times Article Listing Karl's Work on Exhibition at Morseburg Galleries

Pastel Society of America Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karl, Arny 1940 births 2000 deaths American landscape painters Italian landscape painters 20th-century American painters American male painters Artists from Bolzano 20th-century American male artists