A Culture of Spontaneity: San Francisco Abstract Expressionism From the Permanent Collection, November 8, 2008 - July 5, 2009, New Wing, Second Floor, North Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

Culture of Spontaneity: San Francisco Abstract Expressionism from the Permanent Collection (2008-2009)

Elmer Bischoff, along with Richard Diebenkorn and Hassel Smith, worked for a time in a whimsical style of Abstract Expressionism that had no counterpart in New York. The slapstick humor of this painting owes something to the boisterous revival of Dixieland jazz in San Francisco in the 1940s as well as a fondness for comics, especially George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat.” In the late 1940s, Bischoff regularly got together with Smith and Diebenkorn for drawing sessions that Bischoff compared to “workouts at the gym.” They expressed their humor in an abstract language that included agitated graffiti-like scribbles, playful spotting and cross-hatching, and, most commonly, what Bischoff described as a “thrashing, scratching, sportive line."

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Culture of Spontaneity: SF Abstract Expressionism from the Permanent Collection San Jose Museum of Art , 11/8/2008 - 7/5/2009

• Image Dimensions: 56 x 43 3/4 in. (142.24 x 111.13 cm)

This object is a member of the following portfolios: