#Elmer bischoff windows#

He taught at UCB for the next 22 years, winning the Distinguished Teaching Award of the College Art Association in 1983, and the Berkeley Citation by a vote of the Berkeley faculty in 1985.Дuring his long teaching career, Bischoff was also a visiting artist at a number of schools including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1961) Yale University (1961) UCLA, The University of Notre Dame (1971), The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (1975) and Kent State (1976). In late 1956 Bischoff returned to chair the Graduate Program at the California School of Fine Arts where he taught until 1963 when he joined the faculty of UC Berkeley. When it was rumored in 1955 that David Park had been offered $10,000 per year to teach at UC Berkeley, artist Nathan Oliveira - who at the time was earning $2.50 per hour teaching art 18 hours per week - thought that Park had been given 'the opportunity of a lifetime.' As it turns out, Park's actual starting annual salary was $5,300.00. In this situation, decently paying teaching jobs were a rare and precious commodity. Of course, de Kooning was a sensation, but many other New York artists sold well while California artists struggled. For example, Willem de Kooning's 1959 New York show sold out on the first day, bringing in about $150,000 (about $1.2 million dollars today, when adjusted for inflation). In contrast, leading artists in New York benefitted from a booming art market.

#Elmer bischoff windows#

Teaching work, although it didn't always pay well, was far preferable to most of the other work that was available to artists, especially in the early 1950s when Bischoff's friend David Park briefly worked arranging displays in liquor store windows and artist James Weeks painted billboards.Д«ischoff, who in 1976 told Paul Karlstrom: 'I'm still supporting myself by teaching,' had only two one man shows before his first New York show at Staempfli Gallery in 1960, including a 1955 show at the Paul Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles from which nothing sold. A year later he landed a job teaching art at Yuba College from 1953 to 1956. In 1952 Bischoff resigned from the CSFA to protest the firing of his friend and colleague Hassel Smith and took a job driving a truck for Railway Express to make ends meet. Park and Bischoff played in the art school jazz band and Diebenkorn, a lover of classical music, went so far as to buy a trombone at a pawn shop in an effort to join the others. They could be found weekly visiting each others' studios. The three met at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in the mid-1940s, where they began their close personal and artistic friendship.

As David Park's biographer Nancy Boas comments:Д®lmer Bischoff is known as a Bay Area Figurative artist. It is worth pointing out that if it hadn't been for teaching, the tight circle of friendships that led to the Bay Area Figurative style would have never been formed. It was there that he met other teaching artists - including David Park and Hassel Smith - and later became acquainted with a talented student named Richard Diebenkorn. In the fall of 1945 his friend Karl Kasten recommended Bischoff for a teaching position at San Francisco's California School of Fine Arts. For Bischoff, who had fathered five children with two different women by the mid-fifties, the income earned from teaching was essential. 'Without teaching positions, none of the Bay Area Figurative artists could have supported themselves or their families,' writes Caroline Jones in her book Bay Area Figurative Art. By the time he retired in 1985, Bischoff had spent more than 38 years, with a few interruptions, teaching art, primarily at college level.ДЄfter a wartime stint as an Army intelligence officer, Bischoff joined a generation of postwar Bay Area artist/teachers who paid their bills by teaching and who felt very fortunate to have the work. from UC Berkeley in 1939, Bischoff got his first teaching job at the downtown art center of Sacramento High School, where he taught ceramics, crafts and jewelry making to 'mostly housewives' for the next two years. Riess in 1990Д®lmer Bischoff (1919-1991): Photo by Mimi Jacobs via WikiArtД®lmer Bischoff, whose work is on view at the George Adams Gallery in New York through August 14th, was a dedicated teacher throughout his life and career. Elmer Bischoff, Interviewed by Suzanne B. I've taught all my life, and the number of teaching jobs I've had which I haven't liked have been very few.