ARTIST OVERVIEW

Frank Lobdell (1921–) is one of America's premier postwar abstract painters. In his diverse and long career—from his intense and turbulent abstract expressionism of the fifties through the introduction of the figure in the seventies to his present day exploration of archetypal symbols that "speak to the experience of living"1—Lobdell has maintained a spiritual engagement with his work, reinventing and recycling the ideas behind his imagery in keeping with the tenet that "the purpose of painting is always to go beyond what can be said in words."

Although his work falls into the genre of abstraction, Lobdell's interest in anthropomorphic shapes, pre-Christian iconography, fertility symbols, and his references to textile designs and primitive art are persistent throughout his oeuvre. In this sense, his painting shares a strong affinity with certain aspects of surrealism, specifically as practiced by Picasso, Miró, and Klee. Indeed, one of the most pivotal moments in Lobdell's artistic development occurred when he saw Guernica at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1940. 

Lobdell's early paintings from the late forties and fifties are dark and powerful abstractions. After fighting in World War II, Lobdell struggled with the effect of war on the psyche. These paintings, in the words of Herschel Chipp, represent the "agony of a human organism confronted with an environment that offers little that is certain—no horizon, no gravity, no substance."3 Many of the works contain specific iconographic symbols and mark the beginning of a carefully cultivated personal symbology that Lobdell would return to throughout his career.

In the sixties and seventies, Lobdell began to move away from gestural abstraction and started to explore the possibilities inherent in representation with the introduction of more literal figures. In the early seventies he completed a group of paintings entitled the Dance series. These nine paintings, plus several others represent Lobdell's vehement opposition to the Vietnam War, as well as the horrors of the proceeding thirty years, but also mark the end of his early, more literal work and the beginning of an ongoing exploration of space and color.

During this same period, Lobdell, a gifted draftsman, participated in a weekly drawing session with other Bay Area artists, notably Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and Nathan Oliveira. Today curators and critics consider his figure drawings from this era to be the equal of those by his fellow artists Diebenkorn and Bischoff. Lobdell continues to rely on drawing as the primary means of working out the complex decisions that comprise his final paintings.

Over the last couple of decades, Lobdell has continued to pare down his imagery, and color has taken on a primary importance. His most recent compositions are the end result of a deliberate, exploratory process that involves multiple drawings on scrap paper, sketchpads, and easels. The work is fertile and joyful and is a brilliant synthesis and reinvigoration of the iconography that he has developed over the years—a "transfiguration of poetic sublimities and erotic epiphanies," that, in the words of Bruce Guenther, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Portland Art Museum, constitutes an "emotional renewal."4

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank Lobdell studied with Cameron Booth at the St. Paul School of Fine Arts in Minnesota. From 1942 until 1946, Lobdell saw active service in Europe during World War II. Upon return, Lobdell attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) with Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Richard Diebenkorn. Lobdell taught at CSFA from 1957 to 1965 and later at Stanford University (1966–1991). He currently resides in San Francisco.

Frank Lobdell is a recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Painting from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters. He has been the subject of museum retrospectives at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's Legion of Honor and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA; Oakland Museum of California; San Jose Museum of Art; and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. In 2003, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Hudson Hills Press published Frank Lobdell: The Art of Making and Meaning, a 400–page monograph charting Lobdell's work and career.

1. Robert Flynn Johnson in Frank Lobdell: The Art of Making and Meaning," (New York: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Hudson Hills Press, 2003)

2. Bruce Guenther, "Among the Sirens" in Frank Lobdell: Recent Work 1990-2004 (San Francisco: Hackett-Freedman Gallery, 2004).

3. Herschel B. Chipp, "This Summer in San Francisco," ARTnews, Summer 1958, p. 48.

4. Guenther in Frank Lobdell: Recent Work 1990-2004.