In 1940 Lutz taught at the Summer School of Painting in Saugatuck, Michigan, and returned there each summer until 1945 and then again from 1951 to 1953. Despite the identification of the locale in the title, it is insignificant, for by 1951 Lutz had all but relinquished representational subject matter. In Kalamazoo Lake Lutz moved closer to pure abstraction than he would ever again. At first glance the painting might be categorized as abstract expressionist. A house and lake become discernible only after long and careful observation. Lutz’s brush, filled with opaque paint, charged the painting with an organic vitality. The highly potent palette of blacks, bluish grays, white, greens, and yellows-almost garish in effect-was essential to the artist’s enthusiastic response to nature.
