Biography from AskART:
| BISCHOFF, ELMER NELSON
Elmer Bischoff was born on July 6, 1916 in Berkeley, California. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley. Bischoff grew up in a home that valued the arts, painting and making music were important to him since childhood. As an art student he had spent about ten years painting in the style of Picasso. Following graduation from Berkeley in 1939, Bischoff became a ceramics and jewelry teacher at a high school in Sacramento, California and then served in the military for three years In 1946 he joined the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts, the wellspring of the Abstract Expressionist movement on the West Coast. The close friendships formed there with painters Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, David Park and Hassel Smith greatly influenced him. This group began to revitalize the figurative tradition; these artists came to be known as the Bay Area figurative school. But in 1952 Bischoff resigned when his friend Hassel Smith was dropped from the faculty.
About this same time, Bischoff made a transition from pure abstraction to figurative painting. To earn money, he drove a truck for Railway Express and sketched during his lunch hour. From 1953 to 1956 he was an art instructor at Yuba College. In 1956 he had a very successful one-man show at the California School of Fine Arts and from that time he chaired their graduate school and became one of the school's most influential teachers. He taught at the University of California from 1963 until he died in 1991.
Sources include:
Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, 1986-7
Notes from the catalogue of the Laguna Art Museum of November/December 1986
Compiled and written by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher of Laguna Woods, California.
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Biography from AskART:
| A key figure in the California Bay Area abstract and figurative movement following World War II, Elmer Bischoff graduated in 1939 from the University of California. As an art student there, he had been strongly influenced by Margaret Peterson, and spent about ten years painting in the style of Picasso.
After graduation, he was a ceramics and jewelry teacher at a high school in Sacramento and then served three years in the Army Air Force in London during World War II. In 1946, he became a part of the faculty of the California School of Fine Art but resigned in 1952 when his friend Hassel Smith was dropped from the faculty.
At about this same time, influenced by his association with David Park, he made the transition from pure abstraction to figurative painting although his work was softer with much more impressionism than Park's. To earn money, Bischoff drove a truck for Railway Express and sketched during his lunch hour.
From 1953 to 1956, he was an art instructor at Yuba College at Maryville and then had a watershed one-man exhibition at the California School of Fine Arts in 1956 when he got much recognition. From that time, he chaired the CSFA graduate school and became one of the school's most influential teachers. In 1963, he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley.
In the 1970s, he changed from oil to acrylic paint and moved from figurative abstraction to energetic works that hearkened back to the Abstract Expressionism he had given up earlier.
Source:
Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area
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Elmer Bischoff is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Abstract Expressionism
California Painters
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