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Bay Area Figurative Movement
The Bay Area Figurative Movement (also known as the Bay Area Figurative School, Bay Area Figurative Art, Bay Area Figuration, and similar variations) was a mid-20th-century art movement centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Emerging in the 1950s and 1960s, it brought together a group of artists who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism, embracing a renewed focus in figuration in painting.
The New York School of Abstract Expressionism was the first American style of art to have international importance. The San Francisco Bay Area was the center for an independent variant of Abstract Expressionism. The Bay Area Figurative Movement was in response to both. Because Bay Area Figuration often employed the spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism, it is considered a hybrid style that produced challenging or problematic pictures.
The first exhibition to present this movement, Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting was organized by Paul Mills for the Oakland Art Museum. The exhibition ran September 8 - 29, 1957 and then traveled to the following museums: Los Angeles County Museum, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, 13 November 1957 - 22 December 1957, Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, 7 January 1958 - 9 February 1958, The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado, 1 March 1958 - 1 March 1958. The artists in the show, chosen by Paul Mills and David Park, were Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Joseph Brooks, Theophilus Brown, Robert Downs, Bruce McGaw, Robert Qualters, Walter Snelgrove, Henry Villierme, James Weeks, and Paul Wonner. [1]
Many of the pioneering artists in this movement were Abstract Expressionists until several of them abandoned non-objective painting in favor of working with the figure. Among these artists were David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Paul Wonner, Theophilus Brown, and James Weeks.
They were followed by painter Joan Brown and the sculptor Manuel Neri who were briefly married. Other Bay Area artists who became associated with the style include Nathan Oliveira, Henrietta Berk and Frank Lobdell, an abstract painter who made figurative life drawings. Artists who taught at UC Davis also developed figurative work, including Wayne Thiebaud, Roland Petersen and William Wiley, but because their work developed outside the Bay Area and had different stylistic roots, they are generally not considered part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement
The California School of Fine Arts (which later became the San Francisco Art Institute, where many former GIs used their benefits to take art classes after WWII, was the center of this style. David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn met there and developed close personal friendships. Many other Bay Area schools and institutions were also important to the development and refinement of this art movement, including the California College of Arts and Crafts, where Nathan Oliveira taught, and the University of California, Berkeley where David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Joan Brown taught.
David Park (1911–1960) was the initiator of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. As an influential teacher at the California School of Fine Arts beginning in 1943, he painted abstractly until late 1949, when he took his non-objective paintings to the dump. In the spring of 1951, Park won a prize for a figurative canvas, "Kids on Bikes" that he submitted to a competitive exhibition. Park's turn to figurative style baffled some of his colleagues, as at the time, abstract painting was the only way to go for progressive artists. This stylistic shift, which some of his peers initially thought was a joke, gradually influenced his peers, including Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn, to experiment with figuration.
During the decade that followed, Park's oil paintings evolved from using firm brushwork towards a lush, painterly style that included heavy, wet-on-wet brushstrokes, alongside drips and spatters. Before his death from bone cancer in 1960, Park was the subject of a one-man show at the Staempfli Gallery in New York City in October of 1959. That show included many large canvases, including "Four Men," now in the collection of the Whitney Museum.
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Bay Area Figurative Movement
The Bay Area Figurative Movement (also known as the Bay Area Figurative School, Bay Area Figurative Art, Bay Area Figuration, and similar variations) was a mid-20th-century art movement centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Emerging in the 1950s and 1960s, it brought together a group of artists who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism, embracing a renewed focus in figuration in painting.
The New York School of Abstract Expressionism was the first American style of art to have international importance. The San Francisco Bay Area was the center for an independent variant of Abstract Expressionism. The Bay Area Figurative Movement was in response to both. Because Bay Area Figuration often employed the spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism, it is considered a hybrid style that produced challenging or problematic pictures.
The first exhibition to present this movement, Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting was organized by Paul Mills for the Oakland Art Museum. The exhibition ran September 8 - 29, 1957 and then traveled to the following museums: Los Angeles County Museum, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, 13 November 1957 - 22 December 1957, Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, 7 January 1958 - 9 February 1958, The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado, 1 March 1958 - 1 March 1958. The artists in the show, chosen by Paul Mills and David Park, were Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Joseph Brooks, Theophilus Brown, Robert Downs, Bruce McGaw, Robert Qualters, Walter Snelgrove, Henry Villierme, James Weeks, and Paul Wonner. [1]
Many of the pioneering artists in this movement were Abstract Expressionists until several of them abandoned non-objective painting in favor of working with the figure. Among these artists were David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Paul Wonner, Theophilus Brown, and James Weeks.
They were followed by painter Joan Brown and the sculptor Manuel Neri who were briefly married. Other Bay Area artists who became associated with the style include Nathan Oliveira, Henrietta Berk and Frank Lobdell, an abstract painter who made figurative life drawings. Artists who taught at UC Davis also developed figurative work, including Wayne Thiebaud, Roland Petersen and William Wiley, but because their work developed outside the Bay Area and had different stylistic roots, they are generally not considered part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement
The California School of Fine Arts (which later became the San Francisco Art Institute, where many former GIs used their benefits to take art classes after WWII, was the center of this style. David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn met there and developed close personal friendships. Many other Bay Area schools and institutions were also important to the development and refinement of this art movement, including the California College of Arts and Crafts, where Nathan Oliveira taught, and the University of California, Berkeley where David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Joan Brown taught.
David Park (1911–1960) was the initiator of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. As an influential teacher at the California School of Fine Arts beginning in 1943, he painted abstractly until late 1949, when he took his non-objective paintings to the dump. In the spring of 1951, Park won a prize for a figurative canvas, "Kids on Bikes" that he submitted to a competitive exhibition. Park's turn to figurative style baffled some of his colleagues, as at the time, abstract painting was the only way to go for progressive artists. This stylistic shift, which some of his peers initially thought was a joke, gradually influenced his peers, including Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn, to experiment with figuration.
During the decade that followed, Park's oil paintings evolved from using firm brushwork towards a lush, painterly style that included heavy, wet-on-wet brushstrokes, alongside drips and spatters. Before his death from bone cancer in 1960, Park was the subject of a one-man show at the Staempfli Gallery in New York City in October of 1959. That show included many large canvases, including "Four Men," now in the collection of the Whitney Museum.