Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

After a morning of painting, Albuquerque artist Lilly Fenichel heads from studio to home followed by her terrier, Rumi. Fenichel paints five to six hours a day and explores new techniques. "I'm in it for the long haul," she says.

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Abstract artist Lilly Fenichel moves paint around a canvas while working in her Downtown studio with assistant Casey Greenling. "This is art in action," she says. "It's a ballet."

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

"You Made Me Feel So Young," an acrylic on canvas by Lilly Fenichel, is an abstract take on physical and romantic love.

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The painting on the wall is boldly erotic, warmly sensual. It's abstract, but there's no mistaking the sexuality.

I'd seen it before, at a museum show two years ago in Taos, where I stood transfixed. "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" was its title. So graphic, so frank, so lovely.

Here it was, again. Now I stood next to the artist, abstract expressionist Lilly Fenichel, living in Downtown Albuquerque via the Taos and San Francisco art scenes.

Side by side in her studio, we stared at the painting.

"A man asked me what inspired this," Fenichel said, a twinkle in her eye as she watched me closely.

I couldn't suppress a blush, but managed to say, "And . . ."

"I asked him why he wanted to know. He said he was a doctor and that if you cut a human heart in half, this is exactly what it looks like."

I didn't know what to say. But it crossed my mind, under Fenichel's twinkling eye, that my racy thoughts were superficial; that there was more to this painting than met the eye.

Was there ever.

I took the bait and asked what inspired it. She revealed it was a late-in-life love affair, both passionate and powerful.

The man was a musician. She met him in junior high school in Los Angeles. They reconnected in New Mexico.

She left the story there.

This is Lilly Fenichel: smart, funny, energetic, charming and mysterious. She's a pedigreed artist of the San Francisco school of abstract expressionism with a r‚sum‚ of exhibitions and collectors a mile long.

An Albuquerque resident since 1984, she continues to produce progressive artwork in her lofty Downtown studio. She's also a yoga practitioner and teacher, an accomplished cook, a woman who loves to hike in the mountains and walk her spunky Cairn terrier Rumi, a woman who knows bioenergetics and acupuncture.

"She's a fascinating person. Her life is like a novel," says Albuquerque artist Kim Arthun. "She's dedicated and tough. She never cuts me any slack about my work."

Fenichel's stunning series of paintings "Just You Just Me," of which "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" is one of 12 - all named after jazz standards - was first shown at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos in late 2004. It opens in Albuquerque tonight at Downtown's Artspace116 for a monthlong run.

To students of Fenichel's work, "Just You Just Me" is a big departure from her body of nature-inspired abstracts.

"This is Lilly facing herself and coming up with something that is remarkable," says Albuquerque photographer and writer Douglas Kent Hall. "She confronted an emotional area in her life. There's sentiment but no sentimentality. It's pure and beautiful."

He calls the paintings "seductive."

"She took some chances with it and she won," he says. "I was knocked out when I saw them."

Hall was introduced to Fenichel by the renowned abstract artist Larry Bell of Taos, who says, "I have known Lilly so long that I do not remember not knowing her."

"She's good, does her thing and doesn't take any crap from anyone," Bell says. "I like people who live that way."

West Coast roots

Bell and Fenichel go way back, to Los Angeles, where Fenichel's family settled in 1940 after fleeing the Nazi occupation of Vienna. Fenichel was just a child.

"I grew up in L.A. when it was paradise," she says. "When I saw it, I said, `This is it. This is home.' I learned to surf. I was a beach bum. I showed them a Jewish girl could be a surfer."

Fenichel says she wanted to be a dancer, and she studied ballet and, later, modern dance, encouraged by family friend and fellow Austrian refugee Rudy Gernreich, designer of the famous topless swimsuit.

But Fenichel had scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and had to give up the barre.

She switched to art.

"A friend told me, `You can paint forever, but you can only dance for so long,' " she says.

After high school, Fenichel attended the Chouinard Art Institute in L.A., studying to be a fashion illustrator, and took classes at Los Angeles City College.

She dropped out after a year and headed to Big Sur to become a painter.

"I wanted out of L.A.," she says.

Fenichel enrolled in a small San Francisco art school then applied in 1950 to the prestigious California School of Fine Art, later to become the seminal San Francisco Art Institute, home to a vibrant school of abstract expressionism.

She was taken under the wing of the great Elmer Bischoff, Ed Corbett, David Park, Clay Spohn and Hassell Smith, who were putting their stamp on modern art history.

"It was an awakening for me," Fenichel says. "They accepted a woman as part of the group."

The West Coast abstract expressionists distinguished themselves from the New York school of the movement, preferring to call themselves nonobjective painters.

"They nurtured the abstract," Fenichel says.

Under their tutelage, she developed skill and dedication to painting. Her early works, large, energetic abstracts, show a sure hand with color, form, brushwork and use of space.

Fenichel moved to New York City in 1952. She supported her painting by teaching children at the Museum of Modern Art. She moved back to L.A. four years later and worked as a photo stylist and costumer designer, painting all the time.

Her paintings from this era are minimal, lighter in color and simpler in form - more geometric - than earlier work. She got her first museum show in 1968 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Open skies

Major recognition came in 1975 with a series of works called "The Skies" shown at the Otis Art Institute. The large cloudscapes were done in acrylic stain and are a powerful expression of nature.

It was in the 1960s that Fenichel began visiting Taos, where her mentors Corbett and Spohn had moved - joining the Taos Moderns group - as well as Larry Bell, who Fenichel got to know in L.A.

"Taos in the Õ70s was like Greenwich Village. It was a real scene," she says. "There were so many dedicated artists. We went to each others' studios. We showed each other our work. Taos made me a serious artist."

The mountains of Taos reminded Fenichel of the Austrian Alps and her childhood, and she says she connected spiritually and artistically with the area's nature and culture.

"That's why I kept coming back," she says.

She moved to Taos permanently in 1981 and became a full-time artist, showing at the Taylor Gallery.

Nature inspired her work, from warm abstract landscapes done around her home in Talpa to a gorgeous series of three-dimensional pieces that literally lift off the wall, done in oil paint and Fiberglas, thanks to Fenichel's friendship with Dusty Vallo, owner of an auto-body shop.

Partly to escape the cold weather and partly because many of her friends had left Taos, Fenichel moved to Albuquerque in 1984, where she continued to explore styles and materials.

She experimented with wafer-board and wood panel. She designed and built richly colored tables, and did a series of models of architectural environments.

`The long haul'

Fenichel returned to her abstract expressionist roots in the 1990s, turning out large canvases bursting with color and movement, all displaying a well-earned mastery of the form.

She devotes five to six hours a day to art and is working on a body of work that's taking her in a new direction.

"I'm in it for the long haul," she says.

With "Just You Just Me," Fenichel opened her heart, which she says she had never done before in art.

"I wanted it to be a direct emotional outpouring," she says. "This was specifically about a connection."

She says she wasn't surprised that the paintings turned out to be erotic. "Not at all," she says with a smile.

Standing in the studio, I thought about the doctor and the comparison to a heart cut in half.

I asked Fenichel what became of the love affair.

She didn't want to say more, but offered, musically, "The answer is blowing in the wind."