© 2008 Miller Fine Art
MILLER
FINE ART
The San Francisco School
Clyfford Still was born November 30, 1904, in Grandin, North Dakota. He attended Spokane University in Washington for a year in 1926 and again from 1931 to 1933. After graduation, he taught at Washington State College in Pullman until 1941. Still spent the summers of 1934 and 1935 at the Trask Foundation (now Yaddo) in Saratoga Springs, New York.
From 1941 to 1943, he worked in defense factories in California. In 1943, his first solo show took place at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and he met Mark Rothko in Berkeley at this time. The same year, Still moved to Richmond, where he taught at the Richmond Professional Institute.
After working in California from 1941 to 1943, Still's first solo exhibition came in 1943 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was only a few years later, however, after he had met Mark Rothko and had a solo show hosted by Peggy Guggenheim, that he developed the style for which he is now best known. In 1946 he took a job at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
From 1946 to 1950, he taught at the California School of Fine Arts where he became an influence in popularizing Abstract Expressionism. It was an atmosphere of highly charged rebellion, and Still was a puzzle to many of his peers because he was so dignified and ascetic-seeming in this setting. He drank little, had few friends, and worked from an isolated studio in the school.
He made periodic trips to New York, keeping a direct connection between both coasts and the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. It was not until 1947 and a one-man show at the California Palace Legion of Honor that many Californians saw Still's paintings, and viewers seemed awe struck at the violent, raw power of the canvases.
Still's influence at the California School was reinforced when in 1947 he brought his close friends Mark Rothko to teach there during two summer sessions(1947-1949) and Ad Reinhart during the summmer session of 1950.
While New York is said to be the birth place of Abstract Expressionism it was being taught at The San Francisco School of Fine Art.
The Berkeley School
The name 'Berkeley School' was coined by the well-known art critic Alfred Frankenstein in 1937 while reviewing the second annual watercolor exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art. The small group of artists who were mostly teachers and students at the University of California at Berkeley.
The primary artists in this group are(1950's Berkeley School) are , Erle Loran, Nancy Genn, John Haley, Karl Kasten, James McCray, Margaret Peterson, Sonya Rapaport, and Glenn Wessels.
While the term 'Berkeley School' initially described the California Scene of watercolorists of the mid 1930's, it also describes this highly charged group of Hans Hofmann influenced painters, who by the mid 1950's had developed a strong and colorful style of abstract paintings. This style challenged the darker paintings of the San Francisco School that had evolved from Clyfford Still who had taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco from 1946 to 1950.
The primal influence of this group came from Hans Hofmann teaching of which emphasized the abstract qualities of line, color, texture and space during the summer school in 1930 and 1931 at the invitation of Worth Ryder. This appointment as a visiting professor eventually led to Hofmann's permanent residents in the USA. Many of the Berkeley School artists studied with Hofmann in either Europe or America. Wessels, Ryder and Haley studied at the Hofmann Schule in Munich, St Tropez and Capri in the late 1920's. Karl Kasten and Erle Loran followed suit in America in the 1950's