Siegriest has assembled an extraordinarily beautiful body of work for this exhibit. It surpasses in its range and scope of ambition all the other shows he has had.

Some of the works in the show are marked by a re-emergence of strong local color, not used as tone but as a definite space-making device, set up within what seems to be a particular landscape area. This is a definite shift of emphasis from Siegriest’s work of the past few years. Until recently he had composed “abstract” paintings that, when completed, alluded to barren landscape areas. In the present exhibit the recent paintings seem

A group of old and modern woodcuts, etchings, engravings and lithographs. Some Japanese prints and drawings and woodcuts are included, most of them low-priced.

—Elizabeth M. Polley

“San Francisco #23” emerges from a corner of the gallery, stuck like an overly long movie kiss, next to a door jamb. It is the strongest painting in the show: a large brown shape beginning at the upper right and slowly arching to the left corner is augmented by a small snake of yellow paint crawling from the lower right edge. The rest of the works could well have been left at the studio. They remain decorative trivia. Overly large and pretentious trivia at that.

—James Monte

Figurative surrealism is used as a departure in the paintings, drawings and constructions in this exhibit of Snyder’s work. A very large drawing carefully worked out with the business end of a hard pencil is the most satisfying single object in the show.

—James Monte

Jagged and angular best describe the surface forms Miss Bissell uses to compose her pictures. These, combined with her earth colors that have been liberally dosed with white, and with her religious imagery make a very unpleasant total. More attention to the possibilities of color use would certainly improve this painter’s work.

—James Monte

Talbot’s first one-man show, of children and their pets in intimate settings. Although not actually derivative, there is a suggestion of both Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec in Talbot’s intimisms, and even a bit of Soutine in one picture of a knowing old butler serving a sippy. It is Mendelowitz’s eighth solo show in San Francisco and presents his impressions on a recent trip to Italy. To accommodate atmospheric changes he adopted a free-floating style of application that has cost him his usual crispness.

—Elizabeth M. Polley

Landau’s abstractions suggest associations with nature, making an interesting foil for the new selection of Eskimo prints from the Lilly Weil Jaffe collection, also abstract and also derived from nature associations. Dwight Eberly, Archie Gonzales, John Mancini, Harry Troughton, Don Wisks and Farrar Willson, who range between figurative invention and abstract simplification in style, make up the Sacramento group showing.

—Elizabeth M. Polley

Howell has gained in technical skill, but lost his boyish sincerity since those days when he painted San Francisco’s “hungry i habitues” and had his first one-man show at Maxwell’s. He was consistent then. Too many influences are now pulling him too many ways—there are at least three distinct styles, plus their variations, in this one show. The best of them is found in “Streets of Tomorrow,” imbued with a sort of West Side Story surrealism.

—Elizabeth M. Polley

Jewel-toned amoebic shapes in infinite variety, floating in and through translucent glowing space, alternately tiring and refreshing the eye and the senses. Bowman is one of those loners in Bay Area art, and since there is no one pushing him in his own mode of expression, one wonders if his work will become ingrown. Certainly his particles and cells have divided about as far as they can go without dissolution, but the process furnishes endless entertainment and the results are worth the risk. Cole shows Bowman to special advantage, selecting and presenting his work sparingly and dispensing it

This, the latest of Locke’s group exhibitions of prints, serves up some well-known names and a few that are unfamiliar to Bay Area gallery watchers. Karel Appel is represented by a multicolored lithograph completed in one of Paris’ better known print ateliers. Appel’s familiar frenzy in dealing with the human visage is evident in this print. Gustave Singier, John Freidlander and Brigette Coudrain involve themselves in territory that Paul Klee mined very deeply. Jean Arp and Kumi Sugai are represented by familiar images. Paul Winderlich is the outstanding newcomer in the exhibit. His lithos have

The sacrificial goat is a theme that has held Zajac’s attention for some years; this exhibition includes several examples from between 1956 and 1960. Their dates mean little as neither their meaning nor their style changed in the interim. The image, its mood, and its meaning for our time were first defined by Picasso at the time of the “Guernica”—the syntax goes back to Rodin cum Marini. Some of the works dealing with the human figure, particularly those on the theme of Metamorphosis, are less obviously derivative, and the drawings, which are for the most part formally unrelated to the sculpture,

Under the auspices of the Spanish Government, San Francisco State College has thrown together an exhibit of Who’s Who in Spanish Art, Who’s Not Who, and Who Wants to be Who.

Upon entering the converted canteen where the pictures are hung, one notes a veritable barricade of plastic-covered setees with three or four prone students in various states of somnolence. (The building which houses this exhibit had been designated as “The Gallery Lounge” by some unnamed educator.) Some of the paintings, oddly enough, are hung on the walls. Others are suspended back to back on aluminum poles that have been

Still lifes by an artist celebrated in his own time as a painter of fish and fruit, although his income was mainly from portraits until he came to California in 1853. Three late portraits, imitative of photography, are included in this show. They do not add to the artist’s stature. The still lifes fall into two distinct groups: the “nature morte” of bric-a-brac and pantry items, which are less than mediocre, and the “Stilleben” of freshly picked fruit or still warm game, which are very good and sometimes cruelly beautiful. Brookes (1816–1892) was at his best with birds and fish. He was a past

In comparison to art collections belonging to other collegiate institutions—Oberlin, for example—the University of California’s makes a pretty weak showing. It is to the credit of the Longview Foundation that it has even this much, and, since the collection is a growing one, any judgment of its overall quality is conditional. If future additions match the excellence of such recent arrivals as Mark de Suvero’s large and powerful junk metal construction, the possibilities are bright. If, on the other hand, di Niro’s footless and barely “Standing Figure” is a sign of what is to come, the future is

Barletta’s 1961 exhibition at this gallery consisted of a series of horizontally banded romantic landscape images derived from Monet’s wave series of 1880. Painted in dark low key colors used atmospherically and expressionistically, they had a certain interest due to the multiplicity of the horizon lines. In his current exhibition the horizontal landscape bands have been replaced by vertical and horizontal divisions with harder edges. The color, black, white, grey and dark brown, still atmospheric, is scrubbed on in a slightly flatter manner than his previous work. The organization of these

Polarities of abstraction here. Hammersley, a pure geometrist, has a gay and colorful show with aspects of a signalman’s washday. The canvases line the walls in an array of classically ordered, clearly defined, flat-colored geometric shapes: triangles, rectangles, circles in triangles, circles in rectangles, even double circles with interlocking parabolas. His idiom seems to have been born of the same need for clarity in art that prompted David to lead the return to classicism and order at the turn of the 19th century. Everything is controlled: by direction and counter direction, position and

This very large juried exhibition includes painting, sculpture, graphics, photography and ceramics plus the extensive, all-inclusive package called “Decorative Arts,” embodying textile printing, textile weaving, mosaics, jewelry making and rug making. The entries in the sculpture and graphic arts were juried by Tio Giambruni and Eric Locke; the painting entries by William Morehouse, Ninfa Valvo and Ralph Ducasse; the decorative arts by Roy Walker. The total exhibition has a much better “look” than it has had in the past. This is certainly due to the jury.

An exhibition of this kind raises the

In any environment, artistic, literary or scientific, the general level of its insights, intuitions and awareness—its total sensibility, is altered and shaped by a few key minds who open the pathways from the past and present, to the future. This exhibition could well be thought of as an homage to Peter Voulkos, since it was his direct attack (together with John Mason), that smashed, several years ago, the longstanding ossified craft approach to the use of fired and glazed clay forms. Voulkos opened the use of this medium to the chain reaction of current ideas in contemporary American art,

The 40 pieces of Oriental art from the collection of members of the Society for Asian Art came down to make room for installation of a photographic exhibition discussed elsewhere in this issue. A small, choice selection of paintings, sculptures, ritual vessels, and Haniwa figures, covering periods from the third century B.C. to the 19th century A.D., it was the first of a series planned to present selections from members’ collections, and fortunately for reviewers, subsequent shows will be devoted to more specific themes.

Almost lost in this exhibition of more exotic items were two wonderfully

An eight-year retrospective of Jefferson’s work, beginning with canvases characterized by an overall complexity and including his latest Embarcadero series. In these latter he is concerned with the central image, suggesting geographical location by means of color and what seems to be a waterfront profile. In a series concerned with Mission Street, beginning in 1957 and developed concurrently with another series on Jackson Street, Jefferson often used dark and murky colors, with the brush stroke pacing the eye up and across the canvas. These were the moods of the streets.

The Embarcadero series

For many years the Richmond Annual has enjoyed a popularity among local artists that is usually reserved for larger and more famous shows. Partly because the gallery sets no constricting size restrictions and partly because the jurors were given complete freedom of choice, these shows have always attracted a much larger and more professional group of entries than might be expected at an art center of this type. Its reputation is, however, only local, and, although the show is open to any California painter, and the jury commonly includes at least one member who “makes it” on the New York scene,

For the past four winters the Assistant Director of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Mr. Howard Ross Smith, has been instrumental in organizing and choosing the paintings which are to be shown in this annual non-juried event. The Legion in 1951, under the directorship of Mr. Thomas C. Howe, had its last invitational exhibition called, “The Fifth Annual.” The policy of having these large un-juried exhibits was resumed in 1959 and has continued yearly to date.

The official intention of these large (130 paintings in the current show), exhibits is to give a fair sampling or cross section