ELMER BISCHOFF
Painter, 1916-1991

Elmer quoted Isaac Singer in an interview, saying, "'When I sit down to write
I have a feeling I'm talking maybe to millions, - or maybe to nobody.'
For an artist to keep his balance both feelings are essential."
- Elmer Bischoff Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Elmer Bischoff, 1938
Image Courtesy of Karl Kasten

Education and Teaching
University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1938; M.A., 1939; Taught at UC Berkeley, 1946-1947, 1963-1985; Taught at California School of Fine Arts, 1947- 1952, 1956-1963; Began participation in Berkeley drawing sessions with Park, Diebenkorn, and Weeks, 1955.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1950-1965
King Ubu Gallery, San Francisco, 1953; Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, 1955; Staempfli Gallery, New York, 1960, 1961, 1964; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1961; Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, 1964.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1950-1965
69th-70th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1950, 1951; 72nd Annual, 1953; 75th-77th Annual, 1956-1958; Large Scale Drawings by Modern Artists, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1950; Contemporary Paintings in the United States, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1951; Fifth Annual Oil and Sculpture Exhibition, Richmond Art Center, 1955; Directions: Bay Area Painting, Richmond Art Center, 1957; American Paintings: 1945-1957, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, 1957; Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, Oakland Art Museum, 1957; Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture, Kranert Art Museum, University of Illinois, 1959, 1961, 1965; Sixty-Third American Exhibition: Paintings, Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1960; Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Staempfli Gallery, New York, 1960; Paintings and Sculpture from All Over, Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles, 1961; Annual Exhibition 1961: Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1961, 1963; Recent Paintings USA: The Figure, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962; The Artist’s Environment: West Coast, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, 1962; Twenty-Eighth Biennial Exhibition, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1963; Drawings by Bischoff, Dienbenkorn, Lobdell, The Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1963; Between the Fairs: Twenty-Five Years of American Art, 1939-1963, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1963; Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, The Tate Gallery, London, 1964; Current Paintings and Sculpture of the Bay Area, Stanford University Museum of Art, Palo Alto, 1964; The Twenty-Ninth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1965; Three California Painters: Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, David Park, Staempfli Gallery, New York, 1965.