Lot 170: ELMER NELSON BISCHOFF

ELMER NELSON BISCHOFF 1916 - 1991 FIGURE NEAR THE OCEAN oil on canvas laid down on masonite 66 by 67 3/4 in. 167.4 by 172.9 cm. Executed in 1959.

Private Collection, New York (acquired in the early 1960s)

Elmer Bischoff's Figure Near the Ocean, with its impressionistic perspective and compositional focus on the female figure at its center, is an excellent example from the Bay Area Figurative Movement, which was based out of San Francisco and led by a generation of painters originally trained in Abstract Expressionism. Painted in 1959, the present work displays many of the signature attributes of the movement - a constellation of techniques that when used together produce a sense of lyrical immediacy.

While the New York art community of the 1950s was dominated by the momentum of the Abstract Expressionists, the Bay Area Figurists on the West Coast preferred empirical observation and direct depiction of their subject matter over an emphasis on subconscious impulses. The rich, deliberately deployed palette of the present work, along with the confident brushstroke, lend an otherwise simple tableau - a feeling of stoic isolation. That such a limited range of gesture and color could evoke the painting's undeniable wistfulness is a testament to Bischoff's narrative intuition and techinical abilities.