Bay Area Figurative Movement

The Bay Area Figurative Movement was a mid-20th-century shift in the San Francisco Bay Area in which a circle of Abstract Expressionist painters turned back to the figure. It began around 1949-1950, when David Park hauled his abstract canvases to the dump and started painting people again; Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, Paul Wonner, Theophilus Brown, and others followed. Trained at the California School of Fine Arts and bound by friendship and shared life-drawing sessions, they kept the loose, wet, spontaneous brushwork of abstraction and applied it to nudes, interiors, and landscapes. Paul Mills's 1957 Oakland Art Museum exhibition, Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, named the moment. Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, and Henrietta Berk extended the style into the 1960s.

Defining characteristics

• Loose, painterly brushwork inherited from Abstract Expressionism, drips and all
• The human figure - nudes, bathers, portraits - returned to the center of the canvas
• Lush, often moody color and dramatic light
• Everyday interiors, studios, and landscapes with figures in quiet, informal poses
• Wet-on-wet paint handling with heavy strokes and visible spatters
• Hybrid pictures that hover between abstraction and representation

Key figures

• David Park (1911-1960) — Initiator of the movement; his 1949-50 return to figuration sparked the shift
• Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) — Painter-teacher whose lush figurative canvases defined the style
• Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) — Nationally known abstractionist who turned to figuration in 1955
• Joan Brown (1938-1990) — Younger painter of colorful San Francisco life and interiors
• Nathan Oliveira (1928-2010) — Painter of isolated figures, influenced by Beckmann, Giacometti, and Bacon

Example works

• The Band — David Park (1955)
• Playground — Elmer Bischoff (1954)
• Seated Man with Dog — Nathan Oliveira (1957)

Sources

• Bay Area Figurative Movement - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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