The Birth of Bay Area Figuration

IN 1952, while studying for their master’s degrees in art, Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown met at the University of California, Berkeley.

After graduating, they found studio space on Berkeley’s Shattuck Avenue, a building they shared with Richard Diebenkorn, David Park and Elmer Bischoff, among others, who met there for drawing sessions. From this creative association came the movement that became known as Bay Area Figuration (or the Bay Area Figurative Movement) in which recognizable subject matter and the gestural bravura of Abstract Expressionism co-existed.

It was the first contemporary artistic movement that achieved recognition in the United States and abroad that originated in California.

REVIEW: “Making the rules“

With Paul Wonner’s “The Newspaper” (1960)