A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.
Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the immediate aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists. The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. Key figures in the New York School, which was the center of this movement, included such artists as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Norman Lewis, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell and Theodoros Stamos among others.
Richard Diebenkorn was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he began his extensive series of geometric, lyrical abstract paintings. Known as the Ocean Park paintings, these paintings were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim. Art critic Michael Kimmelman described Diebenkorn as "one of the premier American painters of the postwar era, whose deeply lyrical abstractions evoked the shimmering light and wide-open spaces of California, where he spent virtually his entire life."
Color field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists. Color field is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself."
Margaret Leisha Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist who combined graffiti art, painting, and installation art. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement.
Xavier Timoteo Martínez was a Mexican-born American artist active in California the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a well-known bohemian figure in San Francisco, the East Bay, and the Monterey Peninsula and one of the co-founders of two California artists' organizations and an art gallery. He painted in a tonalist style and also produced monotypes, etchings, and silverpoint.
Tavar Zawacki formerly known as 'ABOVE' is an American abstract artist living and working between Berlin, Germany and Lisbon, Portugal. For twenty years (1996–2016) Tavar Zawacki created and signed all of his artworks with his street artist pseudonym, 'ABOVE'. Tavar was born and raised in California until the age of 19, at which time, Zawacki bought a one-way flight from California to Paris, France, bringing with him a backpack full of art supplies, all the money in his bank account (US$1,500), and a 'rise above your fears' approach to starting his art career. Starting in Paris in 2000, Tavar transitioned from painting traditional letter style graffiti of A-B-O-V-E, to his 'Above arrow' icon that represented his optimistic mentality to 'rise above fears, challenges, and anything holding you back from your goals.' During a 20-year period, the artworks of ABOVE could be seen in over 80 cities spanning 35 countries around the world.
The Bay Area Figurative Movement was a mid-20th-century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism in favor of a return to figuration in painting during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s.
Joan Brown was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.
Ruby Rose Neri is an American visual artist, known for her work as a sculptor, and painter. She was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, drawing creative influence from her parents and their friends. Neri is both a painter and a sculptor, and has worked with a wide array of materials including clay, plaster, bronze, steel, fiberglass, glaze, acrylic, oil, and spray paint.
Karl Albert Kasten was an American painter, printmaker, and educator, from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Painting is a visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, may be used. One who produces paintings is called a painter.
Chor Boogie is an American spray paint artist based in San Francisco, California.
Niels Shoe Meulman is a visual artist, graffiti writer, graphic designer and art director, born, raised and based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. ”Experimenting within the traditional medium of paint-on-canvas, but also unafraid to venture into other domains like conceptual installations and poetry, Niels Shoe Meulman keeps pushing the limits of the global urban contemporary art movement," writes the Museum of Graffiiti, who collected his artwork into their permanent collection, as has the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many private collectors.
David Simpson is an American abstract painter and educator, who lives in Berkeley, California. His work is associated with the minimalist, monochrome, and color field movements. Since 1958, Simpson has had more than 70 solo exhibitions of his paintings in galleries and museums worldwide. His paintings have been included in hundreds of group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. During the early 1960s Simpson was included in two seminal group exhibitions: Americans 1963 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York curated by Dorothy Canning Miller and Post-Painterly Abstraction curated by Clement Greenberg in 1964; that traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toronto.
Alicia McCarthy is an American painter. She is a member of San Francisco's Mission School art movement. Her work is considered to have Naïve or Folk character, and often uses unconventional media like housepaint, graphite, or other found materials. She is based in Oakland, California.
San Francisco Bay Area Street Art are any visual images created in public places such as on walls or street walk ways. Street art is often developed in order to create artworks that are outside of the scope of normalized art standards. Street Art has been a major part of the Bay Area's culture since the early 1980s. As the years went on street art became more and more prevalent in the Bay Area. While in some areas of San Francisco this art is done with the permission of the wall owners the majority is done illegally.
Joe Doyle was an American artist. He is one of the original painters in the style, abstract illusionism, of the 1970s and has since evolved his style using computerized technologies to create Digital art.
Jylian Gustlin is an American painter associated with the 1960s—70s San Francisco Bay Area Figurative artists, their styles, and techniques. Although using traditional painterly techniques, her vibrant paintings explore the impact of new technologies on perception. She is inspired by a lifelong love of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative artists, mathematical theories such as the Fibonacci sequence, the resonant tones of Latin phrases, African masks, and antique Roman vessels.
