SEPTEMBER 06 - OCTOBER 27, 2001
Selected Works 1948–1962
Albuquerque #9
DBK-028-OC
"Like most of the New York artists, the San Franciscans believed that strokes of paint on canvas could express their innermost feelings-—even, some thought, their spiritual essence... their greatest source of energy was a complete faith in the revolutionary character of their art."—Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism (UC Press, 1996).
Hackett-Freedman Gallery offers a rare look at one of the most fertile periods of experimental painting in San Francisco and many of the artists who participated in it. "San Francisco Abstract Expressionism: Select Works 1948-1962," (September 6-October 27, 2001) is an ambitious exhibition that brings together for the first time pivotal works by Richard Diebenkorn, Clyfford Still, Frank Lobdell, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, Edward Dugmore, Hassel Smith, Madeleine Dimond, Edward Corbett, Charles Strong, Jack Jefferson, Walter Kuhlman, John Saccaro and others who worked in postwar San Francisco.
The show, composed of works drawn from museum and private collections and the artists’ own archives, compellingly supports the idea that a distinct "school" of abstract art developed in San Francisco, independent of the world famous New York School, which for many years was considered to have single-handedly "invented" abstract expressionism. Susan Landauer, chief curator at the San Jose Museum of Art and author of the groundbreaking study, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism (1996, UC Press) argues forcefully for the integrity of a San Francisco movement: San Francisco’s abstract painters "were not second-generation followers of a movement begun in New York, as they are so often perceived."
In contrast to the New York painters, writes Landauer, the San Francisco work is "perhaps slower, less flashy, and more deeply rooted in nature." Art historian Caroline Jones finds the San Francisco abstract expressionists’ works to be more "sensual, emotionally supercharged, painterly in an intuitive way, and connected with nature" than that of their New York counterparts.
The San Francisco Abstract Expressionist explosion remains obscure, even to followers of the New York School. "One of my greatest surprises was to find how many superb abstract works from this period were still hidden away in artist’s studios and hadn’t been shown in years," says Gallery Director Michael Hackett, who curated the show. Of the artists represented, several are still living in the Bay Area, among them: Lobdell, Neri, Kuhlman, Dimond, and Strong.
Uniquely West Coast form and color is clearly evident in Richard Diebenkorn’s seminal Albuquerque No. 9 (1952), which is widely considered among the finest early abstractions of his career. Diebenkorn’s use of broad planes of color and brisk contours acknowledges the importance of the landscape in this work. Landscape also inspired the works of Edward Corbett, Edward Dugmore and Manuel Neri , among others.
A related but more emotional approach is found in Frank Lobdell’s highly charged anti-war painting, 1 January, 1949 (1949) while Madeleine Dimond (Martin)’s Truman Tells All on T.V. (c. 1951) contains biomorphic forms and pictorial invention of another sort.
Nearly all of the painters in this exhibit worked or studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and many were deeply influenced by CSFA instructor Clyfford Still. Still’s call "for a total liberation from the past," his emphasis on verticality, flattened forms and a constantly expanding space, is strongly evident in Edward Dugmore’s White Provincetown (1959), Jack Jefferson’s 8 (c. 1950) and Edward Corbett’s Untitled (1950).
San Francisco quickly became a focus for experimental painting after World War II. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art had been the first museum in the nation to champion abstract works and was the first to let abstraction dominate its 1949 Annual. Clyfford Still eventually left San Francisco for New York, but fostered occasional visits between the two groups, including CSFA teaching stints by Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt.