“The emergence of an American avant-garde, along with a body of formalist criticism centered in the writings of Clement Greenberg and his followers, dominates traditional art historical accounts of the period after the Second World War. Nevertheless, abstract and figurative art coexisted despite the increasing critical and curatorial attention directed toward Abstract Expressionist and their successors after 1948. The ways that the meanings of … Read more »
José Ramón Lerma
José Ramón Lerma was born in 1930 in the Salinas Valley. Lerma came to San Francisco in 1950 and was one of the first Latino students to study at the California School of Fine Arts, now SFAI. Lerma was soon drafted into the Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army at the start of the Korean War. He was stationed close to the front and … Read more »
Susan Kelk Cervantes
Susan Kelk Cervantes, muralist and dedicated artist for 47 years, a pioneer of the SF community mural art movement, and the founder and director of the Precita Eyes Muralists in the Mission District of San Francisco. Established in 1977, Precita Eyes is one of only a handful of community mural arts centers in the United States.
Influenced by the Mujeres Muralistas, the first collaborative … Read more »
Gary Woo
Gary Woo was an acclaimed abstract painter who worked in San Francisco for five decades.
Born in Guangzhou, China, in 1925, Woo relocated to San Francisco in 1939. After serving in World War II, Woo studied briefly at the San Francisco Art League and the California School of Fine Arts. His abstract painting was related to the Chinese calligraphy he had learned from his … Read more »
Bernice Bing
Bernice Bing, a native San Franciscan of Chinese heritage, received a National Scholastic Award to attend California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts), where she studied with Richard Diebenkorn, Saburo Hasegawa and Nathan Oliveira. She transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute to work with Elmer Bischoff and Frank Lobdell, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree with … Read more »
