Continuing through March 15, 2026
In the Fall of 1975, Elmer Bischoff exhibited his recent abstract paintings at the San Francisco Art Institute. This prompted consternation and dismay among long-time compatriots who were disappointed that he had abandoned the figuration his reputation was built on as one of the foremost painters of the Bay Area Figurative movement. Not only that, Bischoff had also forsaken oil paint for acrylic pigments, a minor blasphemy which allowed for brighter colors and more subtle translucencies, although some thought that acrylic was still “too plastic” to be a “real” painting medium.
Bischoff made it clear that he was moving forward by reaching backward, far before Abstract Expressionism, updating Wassily Kandinsky’s “Improvisations” and “Compositions” to embrace a more complex and elaborate variation of non-reductive formalism. In Bischoff’s paintings from that later period, there is a schematic aspect suggestive of musical notation, linking his work to Kandinsky’s famous equations of sonic and visual experiences. This was more than a visual metaphor, as Bischoff was an accomplished trumpet player who regularly performed with the Studio 13 Jass Band, a rotating group made up of teachers and students at the California School of Fine Arts.
As it turned out, this late-career return to abstraction was not only courageous, but prescient in that it anticipated what was variously called Provisional Painting or Discrepant Abstraction three decades later. The common earmark of those mini-movements was a nonchalant approach to pictorial organizations that seemed willfully unresolved, almost as if they had coalesced by happenstance. There are four large examples of Bischoff’s late abstractions in this exhibition, all untitled (1979, 1981, 1982 and 1984), all teeming with painterly energy and made to look like delirious close-ups of computer chips.
As rich and demanding as they are, they make up only a quarter of this exhibition’s impressive offerings. The remaining 22 works can be viewed as an abbreviated retrospective of Bischoff’s career, reaching back to the late 1940s. It is one of those rare instances where we find a museum quality exhibition in a commercial gallery.
In works such as “Rococo Figures” and “Objects Above and Below the Horizon” (both 1947), we see a moody synthesis of Mexican Surrealism and biomorphic abstraction, featuring forms that populate their canvases like extraterrestrial fungi running amok under dismal skies. By 1948, this pictorial vocabulary was moving in the direction of abstract expressionism, represented by the simply titled “Red and Green,” which salutes the influential work of Hans Hoffman. In an “Untitled” work from 1950, a Clyfford Still-inspired abstract expressionism comes into the foreground, with a residual nod to a nocturnal landscape illuminated by a crescent moon.
Bischoff was never fully comfortable with the abstract expressionist ethos, always seeking to infuse its brashness with his personal brand of haunted melancholy.
In “Playground” (1954) we see a powerful barrage of green and orange describing an ecstatic scene of two children frolicking behind a large adult figure that occupies the left foreground. Here, Bischoff follows in the footsteps of David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, returning to painting the figure with bold, abstract expressionist brushwork executed in a moody and romantic vein that distinguishes Bischoff from the other Bay Area figurative painters.
This painting and other figurative works on view titled “Boy Reading” (1955) and “Untitled (Artist with Model)” (1969) tend to abbreviate and withhold facial details, opting for generalized descriptions of heads. This approach to rendering the figure is also apparent in the twelve studies rendered in ink and charcoal that are also included in the exhibition. These stemmed from weekly figure drawing sessions that Bischoff participated in, along with other artists such as Alvin Light and Frank Lobdell.
Most of these works on paper look hard fought, suggesting that Bischoff was struggling to get them right — particularly when rendering hands was concerned. Certainly, many of them bespeak some compositional innovation, particularly “Untitled (Man Drawing)” (1958), while others are conventional studio scenes with overhead lamps or light filtering through large windows. The message here is that artists need to practice their craft with sustained diligence to find the small kernels of truth that no amount of strategic preplanning can provide.
