Peter Onstad

Tribute to Bob Kaufman.
Lent by Alix McQueen

Cooper Padiace

Portrait of John Davis, ink on paper.
Lent by Alix McQueen

Samuel Provenzano

Medea,1956, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Kaufman

Arthur Richer

Untitled, 1963, paper collage.
Lent by Dee Beattie

Our bodies and the bodies of animals are a source of the curvelinear shapes which seem to have biomorphic qualities. They are modeled ultimately on the patterns of organic growth through the division of cells. These basic shapes are starkly presented here, each occupying half of the picture space. But is is worth noting that Richer employs no devise to harmonize the shapes to soften their opposition. The artist barely establishes his forms before tearing into them with angry, slashing painterly attacks Seeing the work as a whole, one is aware of an overall texture as well as a repetition of black, somewhat calligraphic movements overlayed with splashes, unstructured white patches and knots. Because it is small, twelve by twelve inches, we are drawn into details of the maze.

Gustavo Rivera

House of Wonders,1981, oil and collage.
Lent by David and Jeanne Carlson

Charles Safford

We find in Safford's work a kind of juxtaposing of disparate forms that give rise to jarring associations - the chance meeting of distant realities on an unfamiliar plane. The work introduces a kind of obsessiveness and cohesiveness that, according to Freud, characterizes human dreams. Biomorphic forms emerge similar to those in Kandinsky's abstract compositions and those of Joan Miro. Areas remind us of out-stretched fingers; an ovid path with dark spots evokes an amoeba. Other forms elicit cosmic associations: a crescent shape makes us think, if not of the moon itself, at least of some gondola fit for celestial navigation.

Raimonds Saprans

The Feast, 1958, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Theodore Cohen

Joan Savo

Untitled, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Mrs. Lynn Proctor

David Simpson

A Growing Child,oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Women's Board of the Oakland Museum

The artist engages considerable research in to childlike imagery adding whimsical conceptions of a world perceived through the symbolic eyes of children. These forms tend to express freedom from inhibition, a neurosis-free approach to adventure and chance-taking. Perhaps Simpson expresses the them of anxiety in modern man. His subject remains capable of feeling but has been poverty stricken by a condition of a brutal conquest, and exploitation by unknown invaders. The pain of all derelict children is symbolized here. The emotional strategy of such works is to arouse our feelings of sympathy. We are forced to confront an unpleasant social reality.

Hassel W. Smith

Untitled, 1950, oil on canvas.
Oakland Museum of California, lent by Paule Anglim

Joseph Lorraine Smith

Herculeam, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Women's Board of the Oakland Museum

His painting exhibits direct brushwork similar to what has been said about Chaim Soutine's "Madwoman," 1920. The brilliant cadmium reds, cerulean blues and madders were used by Soutine. Smith could paint his twisting shapes with loaded brush quite spontaneously; the agitation of the result owes a great deal to this direct execution. Smith's flickering effects were not planned in advance. The time required to execute a work by this method often worked in favor of a casual approach toward theme and technique. The value of painting has been relocated; it now lies in the act of execution.

Norman Stiegelmeyer

The Totem Struggles Up Through the Darkness, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Norman Stiegelmeyer

Science raises questions about outer space and submicrocosmic matter -- questions that fascinate the popular imagination and stimulate many sorts of speculation. Speculations about technical questions by nonscientists is part of a natural process of humanizing radically new concepts which may modify our notions of space, time, matter and energy. Stiegelmeyer's works anticipated many contemporary efforts of artists that challenge the role of scientists on issues like biocolonization --biotechnology and the global community.

Jean Varda

The Magic City,mixed media.
Lent by David and Jean Carlson

Among practitioners of collage and assemblage Varda can be compared to Ernst in imagination and technical abandoned the paintbrush, Varda has more authoritative decorative command of materials than Ernst. His work grows out of an authentic "feeling for paint." This is a contemporary kind of fresco or wall painting, inspired by tapestry.

Carlos Villa

8, 1962, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California, gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Bolles

Dr. Reidar Wennestand

Kristin Wetherhiten

Portrait of Bob Kaufman

A printmaker that is very much in the spirit of Emil Nolde's early woodcuts. Here, too, the pictorial structure is basically an extreme light and dark contrast, with the inclusion of a few half tones. It is clearly the emotional expression of the late Beat poet Bob Kaufman --described as an "American Rimbaud."

Saul White

U.S. Bombers Raid, late 50's, mixed media.
Lent by Saul White

William Wiley

American Aces, 1960, oil on canvas.
Lent by the Oakland Museum of California

In the work of Wiley we have a frank effort to come to terms with the world revealed by modern physics. The foundation provided by Surrealism, particularly its invitation to the artist to surrender to his unconscious impulses, enables the painter to create an autonomous universe of visionary forms. These forms seem to grow out of an interest in the problems of fantastic creatures inhabiting Hell. Just as sixteenth-century science and theology found their visual expression in the art of Bosch, modern science is dramatized in the fantastic world of Wiley.

Joe Zirker

Lithograph 1962,1962, lithograph.
Lent by Joseph Zirker

Primarily a printmaker, Zirker did prints that are somewhat of a metaphysical wit, creating illusions of reality with lines and then employing them to tell the viewer he has been deceived about the existence of a real image. The careers of Michelangelo and Leonardo show that the design of anything --from fortifications to industrial machinery --was within the artist's province. But this work was done in their capacities as artists; the radical separation of the aesthetically meaningful from the useful had not yet taken place. Zirker work suggests also that in addition to the design of tools and machines, private dwellings and public structures, art is concerned with the design of the man-made environment. The practical function of a machine and the commemorative function of an ancestral figure has been successfully combined in African sculpture if the sculptor knows how to adjust their basically abstract forms.