HISTORY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Before and during World War II (WWII), a sequence of events would transform the San Francisco Bay Area into one of the world's most revered art scenes. These events would develop into a post-war San Francisco Bay Area Abstract Expressionism movement.

A diverse and historically significant group of influential academic and museum personnel, teachers, and artists would transform San Francisco Post War Abstract Expressionism to a level of art prominence that would rival the New York School that emerged in New York City after WWII, which was credited as the first significant avant-garde art movement in the United States.

Modern Art in the Bay Area

Early California art, often synonymous with California's great impressionist and plein-air paintings of majestic California landscapes, dominated the California art scene during most of the first half of the 20th century. The terrific climate in California motivated many artists throughout the country and world to immigrate to the Golden State to paint En plein-air.

Abundant sunshine would become adorned in the early California landscape paintings. Some artists, notably a small group of plein-air painters from Oakland, California, started adding "shockingly vivid colors, dashing brushwork, and expressive energy" to their paintings of California landscapes. This Bay Area group of artists: Seldon Connor Gile, Maurice Logan, William H. Clapp, August F. Gay, Bernard von Eichman, and Louis Siegriest became known as the early pioneers of California modernism and were called The Society of Six. [2]

The Great Depression, World War II, and some highly influential academic, artisan, and museum professionals would arrive in the Bay Area in the early mid-century and champion an even more avant-garde modern art style and eventually establish what is known today as San Francisco Bay Area Abstract Expressionism (SFAbex).

California and the United States economy were battered during the Great Depression (1929 - 1939). The Works Progress Administration (WPA, also known as the Works Projects Administration), a U.S. Federal Government agency, would be established to provide artists jobs and income during these turbulent times. During the Great Depression years, influenced by the WPA and challenging times, many of the California artists, often known as "The California School," worked with watercolor on paper since it was more affordable, and they depicted scenes of the harsh economic times. In addition to the American Scene watercolor paintings, government-sponsored murals often painted by young artists attending California's art schools would depict the Great Depression life on walls of government buildings throughout California.

One of the most transformative events in California's art history transpired in 1935: the San Francisco Museum of Art was established, and Grace McCann Morley was appointed director. McCann Morley's fondness for modern European art, combined with the influence of Bay Area artist instructors Glenn Wessels (1895-1982) and Worth Ryder (1884-1960), who taught at the California College of Arts and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively would begin to champion modern art in the Bay Area. Worth Ryder would be acknowledged as "largely responsible for the United States early interest in avant-garde art" [3] and would invite and successfully procure the renowned European avant-garde artist and teacher Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), who arrived from Germany in 1930 at the invitation of Worth Ryder to teach two summers at the University of California, Berkeley. These events and others mentioned in the upcoming sections will have an everlasting effect and begin the foundation of the American modern contemporary art scene in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Grace McCann Morley, Douglas and Jermayne MacAgy

Grace McCann Morley’s appointment to the newly incarnated [4] San Francisco Museum of Art (currently the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) in 1935 during the Great Depression would become a pivotal moment in California art history that would impact the trajectory of modern art in the Bay Area. In addition to the early teachings of avant-garde art at the University of California, Berkeley, Morley’s directorship and her contribution to the arts in the Bay Area during her distinguished 23-year tenure at the museum was extraordinary.

Morley, an Oakland native, attended the University of California, Berkeley, studying French and Greek, and later graduated from Sorbonne University in Paris with a doctorate in French literature. While studying in Paris, Morley was exposed to modern European art that was rarely seen in the United States.

After Morely’s return from Paris and a teaching position in Baltimore [5], her first professional museum position was as chief curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 1935, after returning to the Bay Area, she was appointed the new director of the San Francisco Museum of Art. Morley’s position at the museum would significantly boost modern art on the West Coast. The directorship position at the museum, her academic experience abroad, and exposure to modern European art gave Morley the groundbreaking aspiration to exhibit modern art exclusively for the first time outside of New York. [6]

In 1941, Douglas MacAgy, a well-educated curator previously working at the Cleveland Museum, was hired by Morley to work alongside her at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Douglas MacAgy’s wife, Jermayne, who was also highly educated, took a position as head of the education department at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and would soon become the museum’s acting director. During the pre-WWII years, Morley, with Douglas MacAgy as her assistant, would exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Art along with the Whitney and Metropolitan Museums in New York, newly emerging experimental American artists painting non-representational surrealist and abstract paintings.

In 1945, Douglas MacAgy became the new director of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), later renamed the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961 (SFAI). With Grace McCann Morley as director of the San Francisco Museum and the MacAgy’s in their acquired and prominent positions, San Francisco and the Bay Area were poised to become the East Coast’s companion for American abstraction.

SFAbex Sections Coming Soon

California School of Fine Arts and the Bay Area’s Art Schools
The Art Teachers
Clyfford Still Impact
The Sausalito Six
After MacAgy and Still
The Second Generation and the 1950’s
Figurative School
Beat Era Generation and Funk Art
The End of an Era