THE PAINTINGS
This series of five oil paintings was created by Jerry Garcia as part of his
training at the San Francisco Art Institute in the later 1950s, studying under
Elmer Bischoff, one of the Masters of the Bay Area Figurative Art Period
(1950 - 1964).
Though his visual art impulse was overtaken by his later musical career,
Garcia produced drawings and cartoons throughout his life (see The
Collected Art). These paintings, and his teacher, offer a clue to the
wellsprings of Garcia's later computer graphic work, and to the tension
between abstract and figurative expression present in his whole creative output.
Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) was one of the leaders among the post-WWII
generation of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, along with Richard
Diebenkorn and David Park, who, after contributing to the local emergence
of Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s and 1950s, shifted the terms of
their spectacularly sensuous brushwork to recognizable imagery.
"...[Bischoff] deacon of west coast painters, justly celebrated for his lifelong
navigation of the 'tightrope' between abstract painting's sensual materiality
and the ethical implications of a figurative art." - Caroline Jones, Associate
Professor of the History of Art, Stanford University
"He [Bischoff] lays on the paint thickly, an often assertive impasto that
lends vigorous energy and movement, even to a scene of relative stillness.
The figures here are distinct, and the landscape is broadly defined, but with a
sketchy, real / unreal quality. there's a palpable tension between the
representational and the abstract, between stillness and movement. And it is
all in counterpoint to the sensuous colors and dappling light that fill the
canvas." - Arthur Lazere, Writer & Art Critic
"The colors and techniques that Jerry Garcia has used remind me of
the work of the great and historic French artist Georges Rouault (1871 -
1958). Rouault painted in dark heavy colors. He then used wild strong brush
slashes, presenting his figures in somber, but vivid glowing colors with
darkly (blacked) outlined faces and figures. Garcia's early works are similar
to Rouault's best artworks in important areas." - Jack Solomon, Fine Art
Printer & Collector
THE PROVENANCE
In 1958 or 1959, at the end of Jerry's time in art school, Clifford (Tiff)
Garcia was given the five oil paintings of this series by his brother, "if he
wanted them." They have been with him ever since. Three of the oils
were reproduced in the collected Art of Jerry Garcia, published in 2005.