Elmer Bischoff

Elmer Bischoff (1916–1991) was a San Francisco-based painter renowned for his figurative paintings from the 1950s and 1960s. Bischoff is considered part of the first generation of Bay Area Figurative painters, who, along with Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, and James Weeks, deployed the lessons of non-objective, expressionist painting—the importance of gesture and the use of aggressive color—as a means of reengaging with reality-based subject matter.

Bischoff's figurative paintings are prized for their emotional intensity. Bischoff himself placed an emphasis on "feeling" in his work, stating that "a 'unity of feeling' is the principal end. …a condition of form which dissolves all tangible facts into intangibles of feeling." Bischoff's masterful use of color and light to convey psychological states and his integration of figure and landscape contributed to the subliminal meaning and mystery expressed in his paintings.