Upon returning to Minneapolis Loran began developing a personal style of painting, reflecting the understanding he had achieved through his analysis of Cézanne's treatment of line, color, and space in painting. These works won wide acclaim and were to enter major private and public collections such as the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was represented in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum; the Art Institute of Chicago; the São Paulo International Exhibitions in Brazil; and in solo shows across the country. His work won numerous awards in oil, watercolor, and gouache paintings and in printmaking.

Worth Ryder, who had revolutionized teaching of creative art at Berkeley, invited Loran to join the faculty in 1936. Loran became identified as a leading exponent of the "Berkeley School," a term coined by a San Francisco critic. The work of the group reflected Cézanne's concepts but placed greater emphasis on linear and textural qualities, flat planes of color, and shallow "picture box" treatment of space. Loran, together with his colleagues, Ryder, Margaret Peterson, and John Haley, were to lead the way out of a parochial attitude toward art into the modern era and to recognize the importance of abstraction in the works of Cézanne, Gauguin, Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, and other European artists. The Berkeley group, besides painting in oils and watercolor, made extensive use of gouache and egg tempera.

Landscapes and cityscapes were major themes, including painting coastal areas, and the mountains and deserts of the West. In an interview with Hershel Chipp, the art historian, Loran said, "The subject matter itself may have no significance except that it inspired him to put together significant relationships of color and forms." Loran continued publishing critical essays and became the San Francisco correspondent for Art News magazine. In 1943, his book, Cézanne's Composition, based on the research he had done in Europe, was published by the University Press. It presented an erudite text on the subject of form and spatial factors to be considered in the analysis of paintings. It was extensively illustrated with the photographs he had taken in Provence and schematic diagrams he had made clarifying his theories. It was an immediate success with artists, teachers, and critics. One colleague observed that this book enhanced the stature of professional artists as teachers within the realm of academe. In fact, it was not until that volume was published that artists on the faculty were promoted to the rank of full professor.

Erle Loran, 1963

By the end of the 1940s, Loran's work became increasingly abstract. He was to execute a number of non-objective works, but most of all his output was referential. Early in his career he had done some etchings and engravings and in the 1960s did a series of abstract lithographs at the Tamarind Lithography Institute in Los Angeles.

In 1952, Loran was the first artist to be appointed as head of the Art Department since Eugene Neuhaus served as the first Chairman in 1923. During his tenure as Chair, the department grew tremendously in national stature. According to Karl Kasten, "Loran's great contribution to the University was his cosmopolitan outlook on art and his close link to the New York School." Loran instituted a program of appointment of visiting artists to serve on the faculty, such as Kitaj, John Grillo, David Hockney, George McNeil, Jimi Suzuki, and Wolf Kahn. He was instrumental in adding distinguished professionals to the faculty such as Felix Ruvolo, Joan Brown, David Park, and Peter Voulkos. In the roster of his students who have attained distinction are Sam Francis, Ynez Johnston, Jay DeFeo, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and Robert Colescott. It was his friendship with Willem de Kooning that led the artist to come to the Berkeley campus and execute two large lithographs, "Litho #1" and "Litho #2."

In 1930, Hans Hofmann, at the department's invitation, left Germany to teach on the campus. In gratitude, in 1960, Hofmann donated $250,000 toward the construction of the University Art Museum and made a gift of 45 of his canvases to the museum. Loran had studied with Hofmann and a warm friendship ensued; consequently, the University administration asked Loran to play a major role in securing this gift.

Source: Robert Hartman, Karl Kasten, Peter Voulkos, Brian Wall, UC Berkeley