Felix Landau, a pioneering Los Angeles art dealer whose La Cienega Boulevard gallery was a prestigious showcase for modern and contemporary art in the 1960s, has died. He was 78.
Landau died Feb. 17 at his home in Garches, France, from vascular, coronary and cerebral complications of diabetes.
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, and his summer house in Tuscany, 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, the son of musician Fritz Landau and his wife, Olga. The family fled the Nazis and moved to New York City in 1938. Felix studied at City College of New York for two years, then joined the Army. He was stationed at Ft. Ord, Calif., 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.
