Elmer bischoff biography of martin
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In 1956, Elmer held a very successful one-man exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute and from that time, he chaired their graduate school and became one of the school's most influential teachers.
National Academy of Design , United States
1973
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Connections
Bischoff was the father of composer John Bischoff.
- Father:
- John Bischoff
- Mother:
- Elna (Nelson) Bischoff
- child:
- John Bischoff
- Friend:
- Richard Diebenkorn
- Friend:
- Frank Lobdell
- Friend:
- David Park
- Friend:
- Hassel Smith
References
Elmer Bischoff (1916 – 1991) is perhaps best known as a founder, along with Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, of Bay Area Figuration, the painting style that emerged in San Francisco in the early 1950s, which combined the gestural immediacy of abstract expressionism, with a narrative subject matter.
He also began working with acrylic paints and, in contrast to his figurative work, these new canvases were full of color and light. There, he met several talented artists, such as Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, David Park and Hassel Smith, who greatly influenced him.
Also, during the mid-1950's, in order to earn money, he drove a truck for Railway Express and sketched during his lunch hour.
He returned to the US in November 1945. He was a son of John Bischoff and Elna (Nelson) Bischoff. I’ve taught all my life, and the number of teaching jobs I’ve had which I haven’t liked have been very few."
Membership
Elmer was a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters. Stylistically the paint became thicker, freer, more gestural and less structured than it had been before, completely eschewing the figurative aspect in favor of blocks of color and calligraphic lines.
He was primarily known for his colorful and expressive depictions of figures, landscapes and interiors. In 1963, he was appointed a teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, a post he held till 1985.
In 1972, after twenty years of working figuratively, Bischoff returned to abstraction.
Background
Ethnicity: He was a son of a father of German descent and a mother of mixed Swedish-Ecuadoran origin.
But in 1952 Bischoff resigned when his friend Hassel Smith was dropped from the faculty.
About this same time, Bischoff made a transition from pure abstraction to figurative painting.
Education
In September 1934, Elmer entered the University of California in Berkeley, graduating with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938.
This group began to revitalize the figurative tradition; these artists came to be known as the Bay Area figurative school. In Bischoff’s case, he had reached what could be described as a synthesis of the automatism of surrealism, the heavy, ugly paintwork of Still with the new lyrical gesture he was developing along with his contemporaries. Bischoff exhibited widely throughout his career and was recognized by inclusion in seminal museum exhibitions during his lifetime.
Selected Public Collections & Honors
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young / Legion of Honor)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley, California
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California
The Kreeger Museum, Washington DC
National Institute of Arts and Letters Grant,(1963)
Norman Wait Harris Bronze Medal and Prize, (1964)
College Art Association Distinguished Teaching Award, (1983)
American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters, elected member, (1988)
Elmer Bischoff Biography
View Art by Elmer Bischoff
Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) Elmer Bischoff was born on July 6, 1916 in Berkeley, California.
His early works are most closely identified with the Abstract Expressionism movement, that had become a major stylistic phenomenon on the East coast.
In 1946, Bischoff was appointed a teacher at California School of Fine Arts (present-day San Francisco Art Institute). The close friendships formed there with painters Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, David Park and Hassel Smith greatly influenced him.
Elmer Nelson Bischoff was born on July 9, 1916 in Berkeley, California, United States. Bischoff grew up in a home that valued the arts, painting and making music were important to him since childhood. It was then that Bischoff entered a faculty which already included some of the most talented new artists of post-war America, including David Park and Richard Diebenkorn.
Their camaraderie and democratic approach to painting is evident in the similarities and shared vocabularies of the paintings they made.
After the War, back in San Francisco, Bischoff found himself in the midst of the avant-garde amongst artists such as Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. 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).
Bischoff grew up in Berkeley, California the second-generation Californian son of a father of German descent and a mother of Swedish-Ecuadoran origin.