PETER SHOEMAKER
Painter, Teacher, 1920-1997

"I don't know why some people continue to paint frankly
but I continue because it's a necessity for me."

Indeed the radical zeal of these artists was so strong that some of them viewed Pollock's drip paintings as timid and decorative. And yet the San Francisco movement was hardly based on a one-dimensional revolutionary impulse. On the contrary, it covered a wide spectrum of emotions and artistic expressions.
- Susan Landauer, Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors, The Art Museum of Santa Cruz County, 1993

Education and Teaching
Studied at University of California, Berkeley, 1938-1941, 1951, B.A.; California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1940, 1947-1950. Taught at California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, 1960-1985.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1945-1975
Gump's Department Store Gallery, San Francisco, 1953; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1955, 1961; Oakland Art Gallery, 1957; Hollis Gallery, 1962-1965; Adele Bednarz Galleries, Los Angeles, 1966; Trutton Gallery, San Francisco, 1968; Bolles Gallery, San Francisco, 1971-1972, 1974; Marquoit Galleries, San Francisco, 1975.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1945-1975
69th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association (from 1961, San Francisco Art Institute) at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1950; 72nd-73rd Annual, 1953-1954; 75th Annual, 1956; 78th Annual, 1959; Fourth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1951; First Pacific Coast Biennial Exhibition, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, and California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1955; Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil, III Beinal, 1955; California Painters: 40 Painters, Municipal Art Center, Long Beach, 1956; The Art Bank of the San Francisco Art Association, 1958-1960, 1962-1964, 1966; First-Fifth Winter Invitational, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1960-1964; A Period of Exploration: San Francisco 1945-1950, The Oakland Museum, 1973.