PHILIP ROEBER
Painter, 1913-1995

               

"For me, art is the intensification of a deep, personal, poetic feeling."

Thus Weldon Kees in 1950 observed in the New York Times that next to New York, "San Francisco strikes at least this observer ... as the liveliest center of art activity in the country today." Singling out Corbett, Smith, George Stillman, and Philip Roeber as the best of San Francisco's painter's, Kees asserted: "Work by any one of these men would set New York's avant-garde seismographs aquiver."
- Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, University of California Press

... led Robert Motherwell to call Roeber "possibly the finest collagist in the country."
- Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, University of California Press

Roeber had studied with Still at the California School of Fine Arts, but having been born in 1913, he was older than most of his fellow students and had a career as an actor and a poet. His painting of the late 1940s and early 1950s was often dark and forbiding, inspired by the dream imagery of Blake, Shelley, and other romantic poets. Like Corbett, Roeber was capable of exceeding refinement without becoming precious or decorative.
- Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, University of California Press

There was very little explicit instruction at CSFA...Diebenkorn saying to me one time, 'I really hate to tell you or anybody this sort of thing but don't hold your brush like a pencil.' This is the way it was. The only word I ever had out of Still was to say to me one time, 'Don't ever use black as a color.' OK.
- Philip Roeber, A Period Of Exploration: San Francisco 1945-1950 by Mary Fuller McChesney, The Oakland Museum, 1973

Education and Teaching
Studied at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1948-1952.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1945-1975
East and West Gallery, San Francisco, 1955-1957; Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, 1959; Westerly Gallery, New York, 1965, 1967; Krannett Drawing Room, Purdue University, 1971.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1945-1975
70th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association (from 1961, San Francisco Art Institute) at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1951; 72nd Annual, 1953; 76th- 77th Annual, 1957-1958; Action 1, Merry-Go-Round Building, Santa Monica Pier, California, 1955; A Period of Exploration: San Francisco 1945-1950, The Oakland Museum, 1973.