A free-spirited wave of creative energy swept through the San Francisco art community after World War II. Challenging accepted modes of painting, Abstract Expressionists produced highly experimental works that jolted the public out of its postwar complacency. Susan Landauer's comprehensive examination of this dynamic movement provides the first clear picture of the artists and influences that came together in San Francisco's invigorating world of Abstract Expressionism.

Landauer argues that Abstract Expressionism resulted from a broad collective impulse rather than the inspiration of a small band of New York artists. Documenting the interchanges between the East and West Coasts, she cites areas of mutual influence and shows the impact of San Francisco on the New York School, including artists such as Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. San Francisco's Beat poets, Dixieland jazz musicians, and the area's stunning vistas were essential parts of Abstract Expressionism, as were artistic and spiritual contacts with Asia.

Under Douglas MacAgy and Clyfford Still, the California School of Fine Arts became the undisputed center of vanguard abstraction on the West Coast. Artists such as Edward Corbett, Jay DeFeo, James Budd Dixon, Frank Lobdell, and Hassel Smith produced gritty, provocative images whose impact extended well beyond California. Landauer also notes the importance of Grace L. McCann Morley, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who opened the museum to major Abstract Expressionist figures, and Jermayne MacAgy, who brought local and international artists together.

Enlivened by oral histories, Landauer's book is a rewarding exploration of a vital period in modern art. Richly illustrated with 96 color plates, it celebrates the energy and lasting impact of a special time.

Susan Landauer is an independent writer and curator living in Oakland, California. Her previous publications include Clyfford Still: The Buffalo and San Francisco Collections (1992) and, with Janice Driesbach, Obata's Yosemite (1993). Dore Ashton is Professor of Art History at the Cooper Union in New York. Among her many books is A Fable of Modern Art (California, 1991).

"The thesis that Landauer lays out is completely convincing....I, for one, will never look at the origins of AbEx painting in quite the same way as before."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times

"A lucidly written, exhaustively researched catalogue, documents a unique time and place in abstract expressionism's sometimes self-conscious, often impetuous evolution.—Arts & Antiques

"[A] beautifully produced book. . . . Carefully considered, informative and highly readable, Landauer's text maps both the larger movement and, as befits a ground-breaking study, provides a good introduction to the careers of each artist as well as appraising the role and impact of major institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. . . . In sum, this is a useful volume that will remain the standard text on this subject for a long time to come."—American Art

"A learned, finely written, and hugely informative piece of art historical scholarship. . . . Landauer's study offers the powerful and convincing argument that the work of abstract artists in San Francisco between roughly 1940 and 1965 has been wrongly conceptualized as a derivative of trends in New York. . . . Landauer presents the reader with a volume that deftly balances a wealth of factual information about the San Francisco art scene in the two decades after the Second World War . . . with an exemplary analysis and discussion of the art itself. The results are enticing and wonderful. . . . Put simply, even the most casual exploration of Landauer's book will yield pleasures, analytic and visual, familiar and new. Ms. Landauer's study s excellent art history, accessible, interesting, and not burdened by abstract theory."—Michael Prokopow, Boston Book Review

"[An] informative, illustrated study offering an important contribution to the history of American art after World War II. . . . A comprehensive examination of the Abstract Expressionist movement of San Francisco and the way in which its artist questioned the conventional modes of painting."—Art Book Survey

"Landauer's book provides the basis for a much-needed readjustment of art history's focus to encompass a broader range of art activity in postwar US. . . . Landauer's accomplishment is to have assembled the work of some 40 artists so that one gets a sense of the breadth and force of the group, and to have written a clear, well-researched account of its evolution and aftermath."—Choice

"Landauer tells us of the group of abstract painters who gathered just after World War II around the California School of Fine Art and painter Clyfford Still. With strong ties to painters of the new York School like Mark Rothko, and eventually with the Beats, they ruled a rambunctious scene. By the mid-'50s creative energies were often as not flowing West to East."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"This well written, fully researched, and handsomely illustrated volume gives potent new life to artists and ideas nearly lost to American art history. Susan Landauer's enlightening book will play an important role in redefining the post-World War II avant-garde as a national rather than an East Coast phenomenon."—Henry T. Hopkins, University of California, Los Angeles

"This book ranks as one of the more important recent contributions to the history of postwar American art."—Caroline Jones, Boston University