PAST EXHIBITION
Frank Lobdell: The Dance Series, 1969-1972
September 12, 2008—November 1, 2008

Press Release

Frank Lobdell
The Dance Series
250 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California 94108 | TEL 415.362.7152 | FAX 415.362.7182 | www.hackettfreedman.com
LOCATION: 250 Sutter Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco,
CA DATES: September 12–November 1, 2008
RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST: Thursday, September 12, 5:30–7:30pm CATALOGUE: Full-color with essays by Bruce Guenther and Peter Selz
GALLERY HOURS: Tue.–Fri. 10:30–5:30pm; Sat. 11–5pm PHOTOS & INFORMATION: Susan McDonough at 415.362.7152 or smcdonough@hackettfreedman.com
HACKETT-FREEDMAN GALLERY

Hackett-Freedman Gallery announces a special exhibition of Frank Lobdell’s monumental antiwar paintings, the Dance Series. Created from 1969 to 1972, these nine large canvases express Lobdell’s horror and rejection of the Vietnam War. Today, these works continue to be as moving and relevant as when they were first exhibited, providing, in the words of de Young Museum curator Timothy Burgard, “a powerful metaphor for conveying the unthinkable, the unspeakable, and the incomprehensible.” Hackett-Freedman has assembled key paintings from the series and related works on paper, offering a timely view of one of the most provocative and pivotal accomplishments of this celebrated Bay Area painter.

The exhibition runs September 12–Novem–ber 1, 2008, and coincides with a retrospective of Lobdell’s work at the new Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, September 27–October 26, 2008. A full-color catalogue with essays by Peter Selz, curator and author of Art of Engagement, and Bruce Guenther, chief curator at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, accompanies the exhibition.

The Dance paintings were first exhibited in 1971 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and in 1972 at Martha Jackson Gallery, New York. They drew strong reactions and praise from critics, including The New York Times’ Hilton Kramer, who wrote, “ [T]hey are beautiful paintings, and they appear to have opened a new vein for Lobdell himself.” Indeed, the Dance Series represents the apotheosis of Lobdell’s visual explorations of the previous two decades, and sparked the genesis of the iconography that characterizes his work from the three decades the followed.

As a U.S. Army lieutenant in Europe, Lobdell witnessed first-hand the brutality of World War II. For twenty-five years thereafter, the artist worked furiously, as he has said, “to paint his way out” of the nightmarish experience. Lobdell’s cathartic process, which culminated in the Dance Series, was inspired by his prewar viewing of Picasso’s Guernica in Chicago and, later, by medieval woodcuts depicting the Totentanz, or Dance of Death. Other influences reflected in these paintings include works by Goya and Rembrandt. However, Lobdell’s free use of line and open, explicitly figurative forms constitute a highly personal symbology that is firmly rooted in surrealist practice, specifically that of Miró and Klee.

Frank Lobdell (b. 1921) is considered one of America’s most important living painters. In a career spanning more than sixty years, he has continually pushed his work, reinventing and recycling the ideas behind his imagery, and keeping to his tenet that “the purpose of painting is always to go beyond what can be said in words.”

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Lobdell attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where he came in contact with Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Richard Diebenkorn. Lobdell taught at CSFA (1957–1965) and later at Stanford University (1966–1991). He currently resides in Palo Alto.

Lobdell is a recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Painting from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters. In 2003 and 2004, he received career retrospectives at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. Public collections include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.; San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and de Young Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; and Portland Art Museum, Oregon, among many others.

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