Elmer Bischoff

(American, 1916–1991)

Elmer Bischoff was an American painter known for his colorful and expressive depictions of figures, landscapes, and interiors. His work Orange Sweater (1955), evinces the artist’s ability to convey a believable sense of space and light with gestural brushstrokes in a range of hues. “What is most desired in the final outcome is a condition of form which dissolves all tangible facts into intangibles of feeling,” he once reflected. Born on July 8, 1916 in Berkeley, CA, Bischoff studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned both his BA and MA. After serving in the US Army as a lieutenant colonel stationed in England, he returned to San Francisco to teach at the California School of Fine Arts. During his time there he met and befriended the painters Richard Diebenkorn and David Park. Together, they formed the Bay Area Figurative Movement, which broke away from the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism to return to figuration—at a time when it was considered backwards to do so. Over the following decades, Bischoff continued to teach while exhibiting regularly in both California and New York. The artist died on March 2, 1991 in Berkeley, CA. Today, his works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.