Elmer Nelson Bischoff (July 9, 1916 – March 2, 1991) was a visual artist in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. Bischoff, along with

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...

and David Park, was part of the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

generation of artists who started as abstract painters and found their way back to figurative art.

Biography

Elmer Bischoff, second child of John and Elna (''née'' Nelson) Bischoff, grew up in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, the second-generation Californian son of a father of

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

descent and a mother of mixed

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

-Ecuadoran origin. He entered the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, in September 1934, completing his master's degree in May 1939, and immediately started teaching art at

Sacramento High School Sacramento Charter High School ("Sac High") is an independent public charter high school in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, California. Originally founded in 1856, Sacramento High is the second oldest public high school in California. I ...

(1939–41). During his years at university, one teacher had influenced him most: the highly independent-minded Margaret Peterson (artist), 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.

, however, was to change Bischoff's life. In 1941, he served as a lieutenant colonel in intelligence services of the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, stationing near

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, 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 The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

artistic ebullience - mixing, among other painters (and to name but two), with such artists as

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Lat ...

and

Clyfford Still Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately follow ...

. In January 1946, a golden opportunity was offered him: one of his artist friends,

Karl Kasten Karl Albert Kasten (March 5, 1916 – May 3, 2010) was a painter-printmaker-educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. Early life Kasten, fourth child of Ferdinand Kasten and his wife Barbara Anna Kasten, grew up in San Francisco's Richmond D ...

(himself a war veteran, like Bischoff) suggested Bischoff as art teacher for a position still available, at San Francisco's

California School of Fine Arts San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximatel ...

. 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 met David Park and

. In 1973, Bischoff was elected into the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...

as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1985. While distinct from expressionist art that came from Europe, art of the

Bay Area Figurative Movement The Bay Area Figurative Movement (also known as the Bay Area Figurative School, Bay Area Figurative Art, Bay Area Figuration, and similar variations) was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area wh ...

displays the immediacy and warmth that one sees in

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

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 from the painting which was being taken seriously at the time; and which saw the rise of Abstract expressionism. A retrospective of Elmer Bischoff's work, ''Grand Lyricist: The Art of Elmer Bischoff'', was offered by the

Oakland Museum of California The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cal ...

, November 3, 2001- January 13, 2002. The

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

(California), the

de Young Museum The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California. Located in Golden Gate Park, it is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, along with the California Pala ...

, the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...

(Washington D.C.), the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...

, the

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 in Kansas City, Missouri. With a $5 million annual budget and approximately 75,000 visitors each year, it is Missouri's first and largest contemporary museum. Founders The core of the museum's perm ...

(Kansas City, Missouri), the Museum of the National Academy of Design (New York City), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas), the

Oklahoma City Museum of Art Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New M ...

, the

Orange County Museum of Art The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration ...

The Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips (art collector), Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the ...

(Washington D.C.), the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.) are among the public collections holding works by Elmer Bischoff. Bischoff was the father of composer John Bischoff.

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
''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,''
(New York School Press, 2003.) . p. 38-41 *Marika Herskovic
''American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless''
(New York School Press, 2009.) . p. 44-47 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bischoff, Elmer 1916 births 1991 deaths American abstract artists Abstract expressionist artists American Expressionist painters American Figurative Expressionism American contemporary painters Painters from California Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area Artists from Berkeley, California San Francisco Art Institute alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II American people of German descent American people of Swedish descent 20th-century American painters American male painters United States Army Air Forces officers American people of Ecuadorian descent United States Army colonels Military personnel from California 20th-century American male artists Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Biography

See also

External links