Biography

A devoted artist, instructor, scholar, critic, and art connoisseur, Erle Loran lived a life dedicated to his passions. Always open to experimenting with new styles and movements, Loran’s artistic output ranged from plein-air watercolors and modernist landscapes, to surreal drawings and abstract expressionist paintings. Recognized as a prominent member of the Berkeley school watercolorists, Loran was also an instrumental force in the development of the art department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for more than forty years.

Loran was born in Minnesota in 1905 and realized at the early age of 17 that he wanted to be a painter. After briefly attending the University of Minnesota, he transferred to the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and studied under accomplished landscape painter Cameron Booth. After winning the prestigious Paris Prize from the John Armstrong Chaloner Foundation in 1926, he traveled to France and immersed himself in the study of Paul Cézanne’s life and work. While in Aix-en-Provence, Loran arranged to live in Cézanne’s studio for two years, studying the terrain upon which Cézanne had based his paintings.

Following his return to the United States in 1930, Loran published a major article on Cézanne, which eventually led to the publication of his book Cézanne’s Composition, now in its third edition. At the invitation of his friend John Haley, Loran joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1936 and together they spearheaded the Berkeley school, a group of East Bay artists working in gouache and watercolor to create colorful compositions characterized by a graphic, two-dimensional style.2 Inspired by the regional landscape, Loran’s early watercolors depicted recognizable Northern California scenery, including the Berkeley and Richmond waterfronts, and little-known towns dotting the Mendocino and Sonoma coast.

With the onset of World War II, however, Loran’s subject matter changed directions dramatically, and although he maintained the style of the Berkeley school, his landscapes took on a surreal, ominous quality. The introduction of surreal imagery into Loran’s work is seen most clearly in a series of black-and-white ink drawings from 1944, which feature disturbing subject matter culled from the artist’s subconscious. That same year, Loran painted two fictional landscapes, both entitled San Francisco Burning, in which he imagined the city of San Francisco pummeled by bombs and set ablaze by fiery explosions—a direct reference to the military action taking place across the globe in Europe.

San Francisco Burning II features an imaginative wartime scene characterized by Loran’s distinctive rich coloring and rhythmic calligraphic line. A two-story Victorian building stands unharmed on the corner of a quiet intersection, while a military bomber threatens the nearby burning city. Loran saw the deployment of many of his students during the war, notably Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and Karl Kasten; his apocalyptic vision was surely a response to the angst he experienced during the war years. The surreal landscape of San Francisco Burning II is not unlike many of the photographs and paintings of the tragic San Francisco fire that followed the 1906 earthquake, and it poignantly highlights the similarities between natural and manmade destruction.

Following the war, Loran became an ARTnews correspondent, strengthened his ties to the New York art scene, and began painting in nonobjective abstraction—a style that he practiced for the remainder of his life. According to fellow UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Karl Kasten, “The salient attribute of Erle was that he had style, polish and quality in all aspects of his character, his words and his art.”2 In 1976, after more than thirty years of teaching, Loran retired to his studio where he continued to paint until his death in 1999. —A.W.

1. San Francisco Chronicle art critic Alfred Frankenstein coined the term “Berkeley school” in 1937.
2. Erle Loran obituary, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 May 1999.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

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