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| Theodore Lukits was the beneficiary of one of the finest art educations that was ever received on the American continent. his teachers represented virtually all of the major movements in turn-of-the-century American art including Tonalism, Impressionism, Realism, Art Nouveau and the American Renaissance. Lukits was a child prodigy who began his formal studies at the Washington University School of Fine Arts before his twelfth birthday. His first mentor was the Tonalist painter Harry Wuerpel. At fifteen he went on to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts where he studied with Victor Higgins, who became famous as a member of "Taos Ten." Lukits studied with the American Impressionist Richard E. Miller and the muralist Edwin H. Blashfield, a major figure in the American Renaissance. He studied at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago where he worked under the portrait painter Wellington J. Reynolds, Harry Mills Walcott and the Giverny Impressionist Karl Buehr. He also recieved instruction from the Realist painters Charles Hawthorne and George Bellows. Lukits took all of the major awards and honors at the Art Institute and after his graduation he returned for post-graduate study and received a special scholarship to study with Alphonse Mucha, the Czech master of Art Nouveau who was in the United States touring with his masterful series the Slav Epic. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| TNL 468, Pencil on Paper, 18" x 15" "Portrait of a Man" (1915, Collection) |
TNL 474, Pencil on Paper, 18" x 15" "Study of an Old Woman" (1915, Collection, California Art Club) |
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| These "tonal drawings" were an integral and continuing part of a student's education at the Art Institute of Chicago and other ateliers and institutions that were based on the ideals and methods of the French Academy - the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Using graphite or charcoal, the students revealed the form of the human figure through the most subtle gradations of light and shadow. This type of drawing was not "shading" - a word that Lukits hated because it smacked of imprecision - but depicting an atmospheric, three-dimensional world in black and white. Students worked in black and white so they learned to master "values," the analysis of light and shadow, before moving on to the complications of color. At the Art Institute, students kept drawing in black andn white long after they mastered the use of color. | |||||
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| TNL 634, Mixed Media, 15 1/4" x 12 3/4" "Beauty Reflected " (1916) This mixed media work of a woman gazing in the mirror was a theme that Lukits used frequently in his career - probably under the influence of Richard E. Miller (1875-1943), one of his early teachers. This was a preliminary study for a larger "competition" painting for his 1916 final exam, when the artist was eighteen. The slightly exaggerated and sinuous from of this odalisque was a technique that Lukits borrowed from J.A.D. Ingres. (Private Collection) |
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| TNL 633, Pencil on Paper, 18" x 15" "Beauty Revealed " (1917) This mixed media work is dated March 11, 1917 when Lukits was nineteen and had a year to go before his graduation. It was another preliminary study that was done for Karl Buehr's composition class and as such it shows his teacher's correction on the wrist. Lukits used pastel frequently form the beginning of his career and often used it with watercolor or gouache for work that didn't require the drying time that oil did. (Private Collection) |
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| TNL 474, Pencil on Paper, 24 " x 16" "Preliminary Competition Drawing" (1914) This "academy nude" was done in 1914, when the artist was sixteen and had just entered the Art Institute as a full-time student. This beautiful tonal drawing was done in Karl Buehr's atelier and already shows an impressive command of the figure. Thsi work was done as a preliminary drawing for alarger, more ambitious work. Lukits began attending evening clases at fourteen but had to wait until he was sixteen to become a full-time student. While it was not unusual for young men to go to work at a young age, all of Lukits' comrades at the Art Institute seemed to be at least a few years older. |
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| TNL 474, Pencil on Paper, 31" x 18 1/2" "Academy Nude (Competition Drawing)" (1918) This academy nude was done in a competition where the artists worked directly from the model, who sat for a total of 9 1/2 hours in several sessions. These supervised and monitored competitions - part of thousands of academically trained artists' careers - betray the stupidity of David Hockney's assertions that the Old Masters needed to rely on optical devices to garner the accuracy found in their drawing and painting. Through intense, early training the master draftsmen of the past were able to coordinate hand and eye to create drawings like this one, which earned Lukits the prestigious Bryan Lathrop scholarship. (Collection, California Art Club) |
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| Theodore Lukits' sculpture in progress, circa 1914-1915, Art Institute of Chicago. Lukits became a proficient young sculptor but never pursued it because he saw it as a distraction from painting, which was his first love. | |||||