Elmer Bischoff

Elmer Bischoff is best known as a founder of Bay Area figuration, along with his close friends and colleagues Richard Diebenkorn and David Park. He received his MA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1939. After serving in World War II, he experimented with surrealism and abstraction throughout the 1940s, but began to work figuratively in 1952. In 1955 he had a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the California School of Fine Arts where he had just been appointed chair of the graduate program. In 1972, after 20 years of working figuratively, Bischoff returned to abstraction. It his figurative work, however, that is the basis of his reputation and is still considered the highpoint of his artistic achievement. The Oakland Museum of California held a retrospective of his work in 2001.