Site of David Park's Studio
Berkeley, Alameda County, California
Marker Inscription
BERKELEY HISTORY SITE OF DAVID PARK’S STUDIO. In the 1940s, painter David Park (1911–1960) had a studio in a brick building that once occupied this site. Despite a well-received exhibition of his abstract expressionist works at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1948, Park rejected abstraction and took many of his paintings of the previous three years to the city dump. Discovering a new freedom in “the natural development of the painting,” Park began creating richly colored and textured works depicting the human figure and scenes from everyday life. In his shift from abstraction lay the origin of what subsequently came to be known as the Bay Area Figurative style. Soon adapted by fellow Berkeley painters Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and others, this style became an important West Coast postwar indigenous school of art. Berkeley Historical Plaque Project 2003
Erected by Berkeley Historical Plaque Project
The Story
On this site once stood a brick building where painter David Park (1911–1960) kept a studio in the 1940s. Though his abstract expressionist work drew praise, Park famously hauled several years' worth of those canvases to the city dump and turned instead to richly colored scenes of everyday figures. From that break came the Bay Area Figurative style, soon taken up by fellow Berkeley painters Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff and recognized as a major West Coast postwar school of art.
Why it matters
Park's rejection of abstraction launched one of the few homegrown American art movements to influence the wider art world, making this quiet Berkeley corner a birthplace of postwar cultural change.
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Related people
- · David Park
- · Richard Diebenkorn
- · Elmer Bischoff
Themes & tags
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