Danny Heller: Wonderland

n these paintings, Heller covers monumental and lesser-known works starting with Frank Lloyd Wright and tracing his design principles through his son Lloyd Wright, and students Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and John Lautner.  Heller uses his refined artist’s eye and virtuosic ability with oil paint to emphasize the groundbreaking hard-edged geometries used in these designs.  Light and shadow play off the structures - creating new geometries - which further emphasize these architects’ outside-the-box thinking.

This series is a glorious homage to a vibrant era of architecture in Southern California and depicts the staggeringly forward-thinking designs of some of the most innovative architects of the 20th century.  Heller writes, “My goal is to evoke how striking these creations are; how they were groundbreaking for the time, but continue to inspire today.”

Los Angeles, in both its landscape, light, and in the freedom that it embodies, continues to provides a unique and inspiring environment for artists. In his paintings, Heller pays close attention to how many of these projects are a collection of simple squares and rectangles cantilevered over LA’s unique terrain.  The shadows cast by verdant plant life around the buildings, the hints of glorious Los Angeles vistas in the distance, the reflections in a pool - all these brilliant details come together to  capture a ground breaking era of pioneering design and create masterful paintings.

Danny Heller received his BA in paintings from UC Santa Barbara in 2004 and has exhibited extensively throughout Southern California as well as in New York City, Denver, Chicago, Washington DC,  and Boulonge-Billancourt, France.  In 2021, The Hilbert Museum of California Art acquired a painting for their permanent collection.  His work has been published in CA Home + Design, American Art Collector, Southwest Art, CA Modern Magazine, Atomic Ranch Magazine, and was profiled on KCET. He currently lives and works in Desert Hot Springs, CA.