California Post-War Modernism

With the end of World War II, many of those who served took advantage of the GI bill to return to school. Some of those who did enrolled at one of several art schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. An eclectic group of renowned artists either taught or attended school there and the area was a breeding ground for creativity.

Initially, the world-wide art community enthusiastically embraced abstract expressionism as the “new” art. In California, about five years after the war, the Bay Area Figurative Art Movement was born while the 1960s saw many new ‘modern’ ideas introduced and followed by select groups of artists.