Louis Stern, president of Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, is a leading American art dealer with a wide range of interests and expertise. He established himself in the mid-1960s as a specialist in Impressionist and Modern art and gradually expanded his purview. Since establishing Louis Stern Galleries in August 1990, he has distinguished himself as an expert in the field of mid-20th Century West Coast abstraction and the work of painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Alfredo Ramos Martínez was a painter and muralist who lived and worked in Mexico, Paris, and Los Angeles...

, a pioneer of Mexican Modern art. Stern established the Alfredo Ramos Martinez Research Project in 2005.

Louis Stern Fine Arts, located in the heart of West Hollywood’s Avenue of Art and Design, is a lively showcase for Modern and contemporary art and photography. The exhibition program offers a changing array of one-person and thematic shows, often documented by illustrated catalogues. The gallery represents contemporary artists, including Karl Benjamin

Karl Benjamin

Karl Benjamin is an American painter of vibrant geometric abstractions who rose to fame in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles-based Abstract Classicists and subsequently produced a critically acclaimed body of work that explores a vast array of color relationships...

, Lucien Clergue

Lucien Clergue

-Biography:Lucien Clergue was born in Arles. From the age of 7, he learned to play the violin. Several years later, his teacher revealed to him that he had nothing more to teach him. From a family of shopkeepers, he could not pursue further studies in a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the...

, James Jarvaise

James Jarvaise

James Jarvaise is a contemporary U.S. artist in painting and Collage.-Work:He is best known for his "Hudson River" Series and his "Man in the Room" Series ....

, Cecilia Z. Miguez and Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....

, and the estates of Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Alfredo Ramos Martínez was a painter and muralist who lived and worked in Mexico, Paris, and Los Angeles...

, Lorser Feitelson

Lorser Feitelson

Lorser Feitelson was born and raised in New York city but rose to prominence on the West Coast as one of the founding fathers of Southern California-based Hard Edge painting...

, Roger Kuntz, Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg was an American Post-Surrealist, hard-edge painter.Lundeberg was born in Chicago. She married California artist Lorser Feitelson, her former teacher...

 and Frederick S. Wight

Frederick S. Wight

Frederick S. Wight , or Fred Wight, was a multi-talented cultural leader who played a significant role in transforming Los Angeles into a major art center...

.

Stern is also active in the secondary market, offering works by European Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Modernists, including Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

, Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

, Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

, Fernand Leger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

, Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

 and Jacques Villon

Jacques Villon

Jacques Villon was a French cubist painter and printmaker.-Early life:Born Gaston Emile Duchamp in Damville, Eure, in the Haute-Normandie region of France, he came from a prosperous and artistically inclined family...

; contemporary artists Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

, Sam Francis

Sam Francis

Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker.-Early life:...

 and Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

; and Mexican masters Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Alfredo Ramos Martínez was a painter and muralist who lived and worked in Mexico, Paris, and Los Angeles...

, Jean Charlot

Jean Charlot

Louis Henri Jean Charlot was a French painter and illustrator, active in Mexico and the United States. Charlot was born in Paris. His father, Henri, owned an import-export business and was a Russian-born émigré, albeit one who supported the Bolshevik cause. His mother Anna was herself an artist...

, Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

, Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences....

 and Francesco Zuniga.

Early life

A second-generation dealer and one of three brothers professionally involved in the art world, Stern was born in Casablanca

Casablanca

Casablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...

, Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1955. He entered the art business in Los Angeles, as an apprentice to his father, and has had a partnership in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and an office in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. One of his brothers, George Stern, is a dealer of American art who owns a gallery in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. The other brother, Jean Stern, is director of the Irvine Museum in Irvine

Irvine

-Places:Canada*Irvine, Alberta*Irvine Inlet, NunavutUnited Kingdom*Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotland*Irvine Valley, Ayrshire, Scotland, an alternative name for Loudoun*River Irvine, ScotlandUnited States*Irvine, California**Irvine...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Selected Exhibitions

1993: Billy Wilder’s Marche aux Puces

1995: Fernand Leger—Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings

1997: Alfredo Ramos Martinez: The California Years

1998: Picasso—Face to Face

2000: Open Sentence: Works by Mildred Howard

2001: L’Art Brut—Jean Dubuffet and the Outsiders

2002: Janos Mattis Teutsch and the Hungarian Avant-Garde 1900-1935

2003: Lorser Feitelson and the Invention of Hard Edge Painting

2003: Erro: Variations on Animation

2004: Karl Benjamin: Paintings from 1950-1965"

2004: Helen Lundeberg and the Illusory Landscape: Five Decades of Painting

2005: Frederick Wight: Visions of California

2005: Lorser Feitelson: The Kinetic Series—Works from 1916-1923

2006: Claire Falkenstein: Structure and Flow—Works from 1950-1980

2006: Lucien Clergue: Fifty Years of Photography—Vintage and Recent Works

2006: Cecilia Miguez: Twenty Hours Before Dawn

2007: Leon Polk Smith: The Constellation Paintings

2007: Infinite Distance: Architectural Compositions by Helen Lundeberg

2007: Dance the Line: Paintings by Karl Benjamin

2008: The Full Body Project: Photographs by Leonard Nimoy

2008: June Harwood: Hard Edge Revisited

2008: Seeing the Light—Postmodern Luminous Landscapes by Frederick S. Wight

2009: Lucien Clergue: The Intimate Picasso

2009: Lorser Feitelson: The Late Paintings

2010: Happy Birthday Mr. Blum!: An Exhibition of Works Selected by Irving Blum

2010: Richard Wilson: Connecting Surfaces

2011: Poetic Shapes: New Work by Cecilia Miguez

2011: Karl Benjamin and the Evolution of Abstraction, 1950-1980

Publications

Louis Stern Fine Arts has published many illustrated catalogs for the gallery’s exhibitions. “Alfredo Ramos Martinez & Modernismo,” a major monograph, was published in 2009 under the auspices of the Alfredo Ramos Martinez Research Project and a catalogue raisonne for the artist is underway. The gallery is collaborating with The Feitelson/Lundeberg Art Foundation to produce catalogues raisonne for Lorser Feitelson

Lorser Feitelson

Lorser Feitelson was born and raised in New York city but rose to prominence on the West Coast as one of the founding fathers of Southern California-based Hard Edge painting...

 and Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg

Helen Lundeberg was an American Post-Surrealist, hard-edge painter.Lundeberg was born in Chicago. She married California artist Lorser Feitelson, her former teacher...

. Stern is also compiling materials for the eventual publication of a Karl Benjamin

Karl Benjamin

Karl Benjamin is an American painter of vibrant geometric abstractions who rose to fame in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles-based Abstract Classicists and subsequently produced a critically acclaimed body of work that explores a vast array of color relationships...

 catalogue raisonne.

Professional Associations & Awards

Stern has played an important role in professional art associations on a local, state and national level and is listed in Who’s Who in American Art. He served on the Board of Directors of the Fine Art Dealers Association (FADA) from 2001 to 2011. A member of the Art Dealers Association of California, he was vice-president of the organization in 1990-1991. He is an associate of the International Foundation for Art Research

International Foundation for Art Research

International Foundation for Art Research is a non-profit organization which was established to channel and coordinate scholarly and technical information about works of art. IFAR provides an administrative and legal framework within which experts can express their objective opinions...

 in New York and the Archives of American Art

Archives of American Art

The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C...

 of the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 and a supporter of the American Friends of Blerancourt in Paris and the American Friends of the Israel Museum. Stern is also a member of the IRS Commissioner’s Art Advisory Panel. In Los Angeles, he is a founding member of the Photographic Arts Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....

 and serves on the advisory board of Gallery 825/Los Angeles Art Association

Los Angeles Art Association

The Los Angeles Art Association is a non-profiting organization that has existed. The organization accept's artist's for the membership and provides support in the ends of their artistic careers...

.

Stern is also involved in civic and community service. He has consulted with the Los Angeles Police Department

Los Angeles Police Department

The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...

 and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office and served as an expert witness in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County

Superior Court of Los Angeles County

The Superior Court of Los Angeles County is the Superior Court located in Los Angeles County. It is the largest single unified trial court in the United States....

. He is a member of the executive committee of the Board of Governors at the Cedar Sinai Medical Center. Stern served on the board of directors of the French Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles from 2006 to 2008. In 2001, he was awarded the prestigious Chevalier de Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...

 by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, he was decorated by the President of the French Republic as a Chevalier in l’Ordre national de la Legion d'Honneur (a Knight of the Legion of Honor). The award was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 to recognize those whose scholarship and other contributions in the arts, sciences and politics enhance the reputation of France.