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When Los Angeles Art Dealer Martin Lowitz sends a cable to an obscure artist calling for "200 Braques, 15 by 22, soonest," he is ordering guaranteed, authentic, tried and (in a way) true pictures- painted by a skilled imitator's hand. No ordinary purveyor of paintings, Dealer Lowitz is busy answering the bothersome question raised by hotelkeepers and other custodians of public and private buildings: What to put on the walls? Lowitz' answer: "original" paintings. In providing that answer, genial, garrulous Martin Lowitz, 61, has become the founder and entrepreneur of the world's biggest, and perhaps...
From his smart showrooms appropriately located on the edge of Beverly Hills, Lowitz supplies paintings in any shape, size, color, subject, style or quantity. Last year he sold about 40,000, mostly to hotels, and this year business is even brisker. In a recent typical week he sold 1,166 paintings to a Hollywood studio, a cluster of hotels, a golf club and a Los Angeles eating place called Coffee Dan's; fortnight ago he got an order from San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel for 3,564 paintings (all "very modern," mostly abstract); last week he sold...
Unoriginal Originals. It would be hard to confuse the paintings that Lowitz' artists produce with masterpieces. Some are attempts to reflect a recognized master's style; others are done in the painter's own style. They are painted quickly and slickly on a type of beaverboard (easier to store, less likely to damage) that is cut to fit nine frame sizes, ranging from very small (8 in. by 10 in.) to rather big (72 in. by 20 in.). Whether they are semiabstract, magazine-cover American or postcard romantic, most of the unoriginal originals have the restful quality...
Many have found a happy resting place in some of the nation's most expensive hotels, e.g., Las Vegas' Tropicana, Beverly Hills' Beverly Hilton, but they are notably inexpensive, $17.50 for the smallest, with frame, to $375 for the biggest. "I can sell for $125," says Lowitz, "what would go for $1,750 in a New York exhibition. Gallery owners and some painters hate me. They think I sell paintings too cheaply." But hotel decorators love him. Said one: "Usually we've spent so much money on everything else that there's not much left...