- Elmer Bischoff
Elmer Nelson Bischoff (
July 9 ,1916 –March 2 ,1991 ) was a visual artist in the San Francisco Bay Area.Bischoff, along withRichard Diebenkorn andDavid Park , was part of the post-World War II generation of artists who started as abstract painters and found their way back to figurative art.Biography
Elmer Bischoff, second child of John Bischoff and his wife Elna ("née" Elna Nelson), grew up in Berkeley, California, the second-generation Californian son of a father of German descent and a mother of mixed Swedish-Ecuadoran origin.
He entered the
University of California, Berkeley in September 1934, completing his master's degree in May 1939, and immediately started teaching art at a Sacramento high school (1939-1941). During his years at university, one teacher had influenced him most: the highly independent-minded Margaret Peterson, whose total dedication to her teaching, and insistence on the ethical value of art, were to have a great impact on the artist Elmer Bischoff would be.World War II , however, was to change Bischoff's life. In 1941, he served as a lieutenant colonel in intelligence services inEngland , stationing nearOxford , and only coming back to the US in November 1945.After the War, back in San Francisco, Bischoff found himself once more in the midst of
avant-garde artistic ebullience - mixing, among other painters (and to name but two), with such artists asMark Rothko andClyfford Still . In January 1946, a golden opportunity was offered him: one of his artist friends,Karl Kasten (himself a war veteran, like Bischoff) suggested Bischoff as art teacher for a position still available, at San Francisco'sCalifornia School of Fine Arts . It was then that Bischoff entered a faculty which already included some of the most talented new artists of post-war America. It is there that he eventually metDavid Park andRichard Diebenkorn .While distinct from expressionist art that came from Europe, art of the
Bay Area Figurative Movement displays the immediacy and warmth that one sees inabstract expressionist painting. Elmer Bischoff was older than Diebenkorn, and he had experiences in the world that led to his taking an independent turn in painting. Bischoff's quiet and lyrical paintings were serious in a different way than the painting which was being taken seriously at the time; and which saw the rise ofAbstract expressionism .A retrospective of Elmer Bischoff's work, "Grand Lyricist: The Art of Elmer Bischoff", was offered by the
Oakland Museum of California ,November 3 ,2001 -January 13 ,2002 . Elmer was the father of composer John Bischoff.ee also
*
Bay Area Figurative Movement External links
Reference books:
"Elmer Bischoff: the Ethics of Paint" (monography), Susan Landauer, 2001, Oakland Museum of California-University of California Press.
"Bay Area Figurative Art 1950-1965" (about the "Bay Area" art movement: esp. David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff), Caroline A.Jones, 1990, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art-University of California Press.
* Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50253062&tab=holdings "American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,"] (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
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