Beach Scene

PAR-006-OC

"Park's...attempt to forge a new figurative art from the slags of Abstract Expressionism opened up challenges enough to occupy artists in the Bay Area and elsewhere for years to come."-- Thomas Albright, in Art in the San Francisco Bay Area; 1945-1980.

An exhibition of rarely-seen works by the late Bay Area artist David Park go on view October 1-31, 1998 at Hackett-Freedman Gallery.

With an emphasis on important and rarely exhibited works pulled from private and public collections, the show features select oil paintings, gouaches and ink drawings done by Park in the early 1950's to works completed shortly before his death at age 49 in 1960. Several of the works exhibited represent Park's 'late' subject matter and style, as in his paintings of nudes and bathers, such as Beach Scene (1958). Significant figurative works from the early 1950's, when Park pioneered the fusion of abstract expressionism and figuration, will also be shown, such as the Oakland Museum's Tournament (1953) as well as the slightly caustic, expressionistically colored Cousin Emily and Pet Pet (1952). Several works will be available for sale.

By re-asserting the figure in his otherwise non-objective compositions in 1950, Park developed one of the most vital and inventive traditions of the postwar era. Park's return to figuration was fostered by his dissatisfaction with what he perceived to be the egocentric excesses of abstract expressionism. In the catalogue for his solo exhibition at the M.H. De Young Museum in 1959, Park wrote, "I have found that in accepting and immersing myself in subject matter I paint with more intensity and that the 'hows' of painting are more inevitably determined by the 'whats.' "

Other painters closely associated with Park and the California Art School (now the San Francisco Art Institute), such as Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn and Hassel Smith, slowly followed Park's example, begetting a distinctive California style which became one of the principal art movements of the West coast. Their influence can be felt in works by Theophilus Brown, Paul Wonner, Nathan Olivera, Wayne Thiebaud, Terry St. John, and the late Joan Brown.

The west coast figurative movement took place at the same time as young Abstract Expressionists in New York looked to figurative painting to reinvigorate their work, but with different means and results. Willem de Kooning's Women series of the early 1950's and Jackson Pollock's brief use of figures of the same period, fused with Hans Hofmann's emphasis on figure and ground, inspired painters such as Paul Resika, Robert De Niro, Sr. and Leland Bell to fuse abstraction and figuration. Ironically, the two groups of painters barely knew of one another and never cross-fertilized.

The David Park show, in association with Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York City, will coincide with Hackett-Freedman's exhibition at the first annual San Francisco International Art Exposition at Fort Mason October 1-4. The exposition features 100 international and west coast contemporary art galleries, and is organized by Thomas Blackman Associates, the developers of the Chicago Art Fair.