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Dancing
to the Music
Douglas
Kent Hall
When
an artist invites me to her studio to look at a new
series, I step over the threshold expecting to find
some differences on a continuum that I more or less
know. Most often I am right. But for Lilly Fenichel's
unveiling of Just You Just Me I was totally unprepared.
Every aspect of the art seemed different and explosive,
the color, the form, the arrangement on the canvas.
In Just You Just Me mystery and ambiguity abound.
Lilly Fenichel comes passionately to her subject and
its underlying theme is astonishing.
Fenichel
arrived late in the life of the San Francisco School
of Abstract Expressionism. The movement, which stood
at its peak, was starting to show signs of change.
Even painters with a history of stubborn resistance
would be drawn elsewhere, some adopting new styles,
others experimenting with new directions, new expressions
of the freedom that had been central to Abstract Expressionism.
The
two years Fenichel spent at the California School
of Fine Art (CSFA) were intrinsic to her life as an
artist. She had the kind of past that could leave
a scar-fleeing the Nazi's with her family in 1939,
living briefly in England, then moving to Los Angeles.
The story rattles past like frames from an old newsreel.
After high school she attended Chouinard, studying
for a career in fashion illustration. She dropped
out at the end of the first year and ended up in San
Francisco with the purpose of becoming a painter.
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