SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Berggruen Gallery announced Historical Bay Area Painters, a group exhibition showcasing the work of prominent Bay Area artists of the mid-twentieth century. The exhibition will be on view from March 6 through April 24, 2025.
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Historical Bay Area Painters, a group exhibition of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper will feature historical artworks by Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, David Park, and Paul Wonner. Spanning from Diebenkorn’s Albuquerque, New Mexico (1950) to Nathan Oliveira’s Untitled Seated Figure (1994), the exhibition offers a glimpse into the development of a movement which decisively moved beyond the dominant, nationalist trends of New York’s Abstract Expressionism. Rather than merely returning to figuration, these Post-War painters and teachers, who would come to be known—though often reluctantly—as the Bay Area Figurative School, developed a new style of painting. While drawing on techniques and elements of abstraction, they challenged its hegemonic resistance to subjective and representational forms.
By reintroducing recognizable subject matter such as the figure, the still life, and the landscape, the Bay Area Figurative Movement produced a body of work with a generous personal vision; yet the vitality of abstraction remained, evident in bold colors and visceral compositions playing off the physical attributes of Northern California–such as the saturation of a sunset or the illumination of a bather emerging at sea shore. Historical Bay Area Painters includes paintings from Diebenkorn's acclaimed Ocean Park Series—a pivotal moment in his career—where blue hues hint at California’s distinctive light. Similarly, Joan Brown’s monumental eight-foot painting Golden Gate Bridge (1974) boldly captures the iconic bridge’s vermillion tones. David Park, the artist often credited with inaugurating the Bay Area Figurative Movement, is represented by both early (Brush and Comb, 1956) and later (Untitled, Berkeley Figures, 1959) works. Park’s fabled 1949 visit to the Berkeley dump where he destroyed his body of figurative work remains a defining moment of the movement.
Berggruen Gallery has a distinguished history of exhibiting and championing the work of acclaimed Bay Area artists. Richard Diebenkorn first exhibited with Berggruen Gallery in 1972, followed by Paul Wonner in 1978, Elmer Bischoff in 1979, and both Manuel Neri and Nathan Oliveria, in 1981. Many of the works included in the show are on loan from private collections and have rarely been exhibited to the public.
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