New Laguna Art Museum Exhibit To Showcase Old Laguna, Beauty of OC

LAGUNA BEACH, CA — A new exhibition will debut at the Laguna Art Museum this June, museum organizers announced Tuesday.

The upcoming exhibition, Joseph Kleitsch: Abroad and At Home in Old Laguna, will showcase the work of impressionist painter Joseph Kleitsch, whose pieces "vividly capture the energy and beauty of Southern California" when it debuts on June 24.

The Hungarian-born artist's early work is comprised mostly of small still-life paintings and eventually, skilled portraits which he built his name on. In 1920, he and his wife Edna settled in Laguna Beach, where he became a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association and started painted landscapes and street scenes.

“We cannot wait to welcome guests to this exhibition that touches upon every period of Joseph Kleitsch’s artistic output,” Julie Perlin Lee, Director of Laguna Art Museum, said in a news release. “ More than 25 individual and organizational lenders have enthusiastically come together to bring the best of Kleitsch’s artworks together in a showing of sensuous portraits, realistic still lifes and landscape paintings that document the artist’s experimentation and growth from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism. Because of the artist’s ties to Laguna Beach, there is no venue or location more perfect than Laguna Art Museum.”

Notably, one of Kleitsch's paintings depicted a historic view of Laguna Beach's first post office located near present-day Laguna Avenue and Coast Highway.

In 1924, Kleitsch painted works at the Mission San Juan Capistrano and created two nearly identical views of downtown Laguna titled Laguna Road I and Laguna Road II. The paintings depicted the unpaved Coast Boulevard that was finally paved in 1926.

Joseph Kleitsch: Abroad and At Home in Old Laguna will be on display from June 24 to Sept. 24 at the Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive.

For more information on museum hours, visit the museum's website.