Felix Landau, Had Los Angeles Art Gallery, 78

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Felix Landau, a pioneering Los Angeles, California, art dealer whose
La Cienega Boulevard gallery was a prestigious showcase for modern and
contemporary art in the 1960s, died, February 17, 2003, at his home in
Garches, France, from vascular, coronary and cerebral complications of
diabetes, at the age of 78.

Landau lived in Europe for the last 30 years of his life, dividing his
time between his primary home in Garches, just west of Paris, France,
and his summer house in Tuscany, Italy, but he is still revered in Los
Angeles art circles as a dealer who made a difference.

"He was ahead of his time," said Los Angeles dealer Louis Stern,
noting that Landau's name is a mark of quality on artworks that appear
on the resale market. "He was very knowledgeable and he had a
wonderful eye. He always had the right artists."

Landau filled an important niche in the local art scene, said Henry
Hopkins, who operated a gallery on La Cienega in the 1960s and went on
to direct museums, including the UCLA Hammer.

Called "the tastemaker of La Cienega" in a 1967 Times interview,
Landau introduced Austrian artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt to
Los Angeles.

In an international exhibition program, he presented British artist
Francis Bacon's first show in Los Angeles, staged a landmark
exhibition of Peter Voulkos' breakthrough ceramic sculpture, and
championed California abstract painter John McLaughlin, Hopkins said.

Landau was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria, the son of musician Fritz
Landau and his wife, Olga. The family fled the Nazis and moved to New
York City, New York, in 1938. Felix studied at City College of New
York for two years, then joined the Army. He was stationed at Ft. Ord,
California, and then sent to the Pacific, where he met folk singer
Pete Seeger, a fellow soldier.

At the end of World War II, Landau returned to New York, where he
became Seeger's manager and did public relations for Folkways Records.

While working in the music business, he met Mitzi Ruth Ander, an
employee of the Decca record company who had studied the history of
art and music. In 1948 they were married, moved to Los Angeles and
opened a gallery and frame shop on Melrose Avenue in collaboration
with several artists.

The gallery, Fraymart, was devastated by a fire, but a group of
artists spearheaded an auction of their work to ease the loss. The
Landaus stayed in business, and in 1951 opened the Felix Landau
Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard, which would become L.A.'s gallery row
and the scene of Monday night Art Walks.

The Landau gallery developed an ambitious international exhibition
program, including works by British sculptor Henry Moore and
California artists Sam Francis, Paul Wonner, William Dole and Jack
Zajac.

The gallery didn't show Pop art, however.

"I don't go for this fashion," Landau told an interviewer in 1967.
"It's a term as idiotic as progress. There's no fashion in art, and
there's no progress in art."

Still, he had an eye for the new and for opportunities. In one major
coup, Landau took charge of the estate of French sculptor Gaston
Lachaise.

He was critical of big business' forays into the rarefied sphere of
fine art.

"I am delighted that the people who buy their clothes, their furniture
and their jewelry at Sears can now purchase their art there as well.
Our clients are not among them," he said in 1967 after Sears opened an
art emporium near his gallery.

By then he had established a clientele that included such Hollywood
celebrities as film director and writer Billy Wilder and actors Jack
Lemmon, Julie Andrews and Marlo Thomas.

Landau branched out in New York City in 1966 when he bought a
controlling interest in the Alan Gallery -- which presented the first
exhibitions of British artist David Hockney's work in the U.S., in
1964 and 1967. The gallery operated as Landau-Alan until 1969, when
Landau bought out his partner, Charles Alan, and changed the name to
the Felix Landau Gallery.

Landau ended his marriage, closed his galleries and moved to Europe in
the early 1970s. He settled in Paris, where he worked as a private art
dealer, and bought an old farmhouse in Tuscany as a summer retreat. He
married Elga Heinzen, a Swiss painter, in 1980.

Landau returned to the music business in the early 1970s, but shifted
to the creative side. With his musician son Jeffrey, he began writing
song lyrics and had considerable success. His biggest hit was "Shine
Baby Shine," an English-lyric single from an album recorded in 1979 by
the French pop group Martin Circus.