In the 1950s, a small group of artists in San Francisco took a surprising turn away from Abstract Expressionism, which dominated progressive art in New York and California, by reintroducing recognizable subject matter into their painting…David Park, who was teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Arts Institute), initiated this embrace of the figure in 1950. His Four Women (1959) demonstrates how he adapted the gestural style of action painting to his rendering of the female body.

-Sidney Simon, PhD ’18

On loan: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, David Park: A Retrospective, July 17 – October 4, 2020