Irvine, CA - Guest Curator Dr. Patricia Trenton, a noted art historian, is researching and writing the principal essay on the life and work of Joseph Kleitsch (1882 - 1931). This definitive biography will be part of a retrospective exhibition and book on this important Hungarian-American artist who spent the last decade of his life in Laguna Beach.

In his teens in Hungary, Joseph Kleitsch was apprenticed to a sign painter, but he left after about eighteen months to open his own studio as a portrait painter.  Around 1901 he immigrated to Germany and then to the United States, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio.  About 1907 he was in Hutchinson, Kansas, but, after only a short time, he relocated to Mexico City, residing there between 1907 and 1909.  Sometime in 1909 he moved to Chicago.

In 1912 Kleitsch achieved recognition for commissioned portraits he had done of Mexican President Francisco Madero and his wife.   Well established as a portrait painter, he joined the Palette and Chisel Club and began participating in local exhibitions with the club and at the Art Institute of Chicago around 1914.  He received high praise for these works and was compared to the Spanish artist Joaquin Sorolla (1863 - 1923) as well as to Rembrandt.

In 1920 Kleitsch moved to Southern California, establishing residency in Laguna Beach.  He was already acquainted with artists who had preceded him, such as Edgar Payne.  He again established himself as a portrait painter -- his main source of income -- but also began to include landscape and still lifes in his oeuvre.  He was a bold colorist, employing a bravura brush stroke. He especially enjoyed painting in and around Laguna Beach, whose charms he knew would soon succumb to real estate development. 

In 1925 Kleitsch traveled to Europe, visiting France and Spain where he painted portraits and landscapes.  He returned to California in November 1927 and he continued to paint in Laguna until his untimely death at the age of forty-nine. 

Kleitsch held memberships with the Chicago Society of Artists, the Laguna Beach Art Association, the Palette and Chisel Club of Chicago, and the Painters and Sculptors Club, which he co-founded in 1923 with Grayson Sayre.  The numerous awards which he had garnered during his career included a Gold Medal, Palette and Chisel Club; a Silver Medal, Painters and Sculptors Club; a First Prize, California State Fair; and a First Prize and Figure Prize, Laguna Beach Art Association. 

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