California Abstractionists – Group Exhibition

California Abstractionists

Group Exhibition

Findlay Galleries is pleased to present a group exhibition of abstract works from our esteemed collection of California Abstractionists at our New York gallery location.

“After World War II, many veterans enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, using their GI Bill to further their art education. Most of these men and women were older than the average art student, more experienced, more sophisticated… As the student body of an art school, they were an exceptionally serious and vital group of people. They were concerned with the search for values on a level of maturity quite different from that of the usual student, perhaps because of their war experiences.

During this same period, in one of those peculiar conjunctions of history, a group of instructors were gathered together at the art school, under the direction of Douglas MacAgy, who was at the forefront of the development of a new abstract style of painting in America including artists such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and others. The combination of these two factors, mature students and exceptional instructors, resulted in a solar flare in San Francisco’s art history. Cooperative galleries, run by the artists sprang up around town, and there was a passionate involvement of the painters in the new movement. Accurately or not, the French critics eventually named the development the “École du Pacific.” Many of the painters in San Francisco at that time are now nationally and internationally known.” – Mary Fuller, Art Forum, 1971

This exhibition includes works from Leonard Edmondson, John Grillo, Frank Lobdell, Gordon Onslow Ford, Fritz Rauh and Jack Wright, all artists who have influenced and participated in the California Abstract Expressionist movement in various ways.

James MuldoonCalifornia Abstractionists – Group Exhibition