Organized by Gallery director Jock Reynolds, this exhibition features approximately 30 works by West Coast artists drawn primarily from the Gallery’s permanent collection. Beginning in the mid-20th century, out of the studios, art schools, and universities of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, a major trend in American art developed, one that adapted and transformed some of the painterly techniques of Abstract Expressionism to render the human figure and other subjects recognizable once more and in powerful new ways. The exhibition presents the work of five artists central to this movement—David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, and Manuel Neri—whose devotion to teaching not only helped to support each other but also strongly influenced new generations of artists, including Reynolds, who studied with Neri and Thiebaud at UC Davis. Included in the exhibition is David Park’s late masterpiece The Model (1959), a painting recently purchased by the Gallery. It is accompanied by an array of other important new acquisitions from the Bay Area School as well as many major works long at the Gallery but never before shown in concert with one another.
Exhibition: Five West Coast Artists: Bischoff, Diebenkorn, Neri, Park, and Thiebaud
David Park, The Model, 1959. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Partial promised gift of Karen, Lawrence, and Ellen Eisner, in memory of their mother, Anita Brand Eisner; gift of Laila Twigg-Smith, by exchange; and purchased with the Charles B. Benenson, B.A. 1933, Fund; the Walter H. and Margaret Dwyer Clemens, B.A. 1951, Director’s Discretionary Fund for the Yale University Art Gallery; the Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Class of 1913, Fund; The Iola S. Haverstick Fund for American Art; The Heinz Family Fund; the Katharine Ordway Fund; the Joann and Gifford Phillips, Class of 1942, Fund; and the George A., Class of 1954, and Nancy P. Shutt Acquisition Fund. Courtesy of Hackett | Mill, representative of the Estate of David Park
Exhibition organized by Jock Reynolds, the Henry J. Heinz II Director. Made possible by the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund.