In the 1950s, a movement arose in all the arts that rejected commercialism and conformity, rules and refinement, in favor of free and unfettered self-expression. A group of artists and writers in this movement clustered in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, and became known as Beatniks, or the Beat Generation. This liberal atmosphere encouraged women to assert their own talent, and they soon began to make art history.
Five women artists from the Bay Area have had an impact on the history of American art and achieved national fame and respect in the art world.
1920s
Ruth Asawa, 1926-2013
Ruth Asawa, 1926-2013
Jay DeFeo, 1928-1989
1930s
Viola Frey, 1933-2004
Joan Brown, 1938-1990
1940s
Hung Liu, 1948—still living
Hung Liu, 1948—still living
These artists achieved fame by coming up with innovations in the art-making process. It is not so much that they were striving for novelty per se, but in striving to express themselves, they came up with a new approach, something that made other artists, and critics, sit up and take notice. Each of them is also an important figure in the history of the Bay Area because they were well-known in their time, with a wide effect on their communities.
First, let's get oriented chronologically. In the 1920s, we have Ruth Asawa, born 1926, and Jay DeFeo, born 1928. Their careers blossomed in the 1950s.
In the 1930s, we have Viola Frey, born 1933, and Joan Brown, born 1938. Frey's art career didn't get going until the 1970s, because she had to work as an accountant for Macy's San Francisco for ten years before she got a teaching position. Joan Brown, by contrast, was precocious. Her career got going during the Beatnik generation in the 1950s, at the same time as Jay DeFeo's; in fact, they were neighbors.
From the 1940s, there is Hung Liu, a Chinese immigrant born in 1948 whose American art career started in the 1980s when she was permitted by her government to study art at UC San Diego. Hung Liu is about 71 in 2019 and still a very active artist.
Now let's look at these artists one at a time.
Ruth Asawa, 1926-2013
 |
| Ruth Asawa, 1954 nytimes.com |
Sculptor Ruth Asawa was born in Norwalk, California to Japanese immigrants who ran a truck farm. During World War II, her father was detained by the FBI and her family was sent to a Relocation Center in Arkansas, where Ruth graduated from high school.
She attended Milwaukee State Teacher’s College for three years, but she was barred from the student-teacher program because of her ethnicity, so she trained to be an artist at the experimental Black Mountain College.
 |
| Ruth Asawa at Work with Children, 1957 Photo by Imogen Cunningham moma.org |
Asawa is one of the few artists who have embraced both art-making and motherhood at the same time. Married to architect Albert Lanier, she bore and raised six children during the early part of her career. They lived in Noe Valley, in San Francisco.
 |
| Permanent installation of works donated by the artist in 2005 Education Tower, de Young Museum Photo by Dan L. Smith |
Asawa's basic innovation was using fine wire as a material for sculpture. She developed the idea after a trip to Mexico where wire baskets were used to hold fruits and vegetables at roadside stands.
Her second innovation was to create form by enclosing space. Previously sculpture had been made by chipping away at some solid material like stone or wood; or it had been made with clay, in an additive process. She was the first to create forms that enclose space.
Instead of putting these new forms on a traditional pedestal, she strung them in chains, like beads, and hung groups of them from the ceiling to create a form that evokes a chandelier, which then casts enchanting shadows.
She also innovated the idea of creating forms within forms. It is interesting to note that she was pregnant much of the time that she was creating these forms within forms.
 |
| Untitled (tied wire), 1974 Façade of Oakland Museum of Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
In the next phase of her career, Asawa started making radiating forms using tied wire. This innovation was also related to Mexican culture, as they make dolls and decorative objects out of tied corn husks. The Oakland Museum of California has an example at their front entrance. They display another one inside, plus a sculpture of the hanging basket type.
 |
| Andrea, 1968 Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco Cast bronze ruthawawa.com |
As her children grew older, Asawa became more involved with the community and started designing public fountains. After working with abstract forms for so many years, Asawa created a figurative sculpture for a fountain in Ghiradelli Square. Fountains often feature mermaids; her great innovation here was to depict a mother mermaid nursing a baby mermaid.
 |
| Hyatt on Union Square Fountain, 1973 San Francisco, CA ruthawawa.com |
Asawa used a low relief form of sculpture for a fountain she designed for the Hyatt Hotel on Union Square. Using artists and students from the community, she made a map of San Francisco with scenes typical of each neighborhood. This sculpture was a beloved landmark for forty years when Apple proposed to remove it for the sake of the new store they were building nearby. Public outcry forced them to incorporate the fountain into their design.
 |
| Aurora, 1986 Bayside Plaza, San Francisco, CA stainless steel / 13 ft diameter Internet |
For her next phase, Asawa turned to origami, the art of making forms by folding paper. She then had her origami creations cast in bronze, another innovation. One of her largest origami sculptures, called Aurora, from 1986 is installed along the Embarcadero near the Oakland Bay Bridge.
 |
| Japanese American Internment Memorial Sculpture, 1994 Federal Building, San Jose, CA Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
The Federal Building on Second Street in San Jose also has has one of Asawa's low relief sculptures, though it is not associated with a fountain. This one depicts the round-up and detention of Japanese Americans in internment camps.
Jay DeFeo, 1928-1989
Painter Jay DeFeo was born in New Hampshire but she lived with her mother in San Jose, CA, from age 10, and attended San Jose High School. She earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in studio art at UC Berkeley.
In the 1950's she was married to an artist named Wally Hedrick—who also did very interesting work, though he is less famous—but they didn't have children. They lived on Fillmore Street in San Francisco when the Fillmore area was home to a collection of counter-culture artists and poets associated with the Beat Generation.
DeFeo's early work used oil paint but she used a special powder to thicken it to the texture of mud so that she could shape it into different forms with a palette knife. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has one of her best works in this mode, called The Veronica. Here the paint is shaped into swirls that evoke the flashing movements of a matador's cape.
In a work called The Jewel, DeFeo shaped the paint in a radiating form. This work is 10 feet tall and almost 5 feet wide. It combines rough brushstrokes with precise edges. She abandoned it after a year's work because she became obsessed with another project; she didn't exhibit it until several years later. The darkness seems to burst into light, like the Big Bang.
In the 1950's she was married to an artist named Wally Hedrick—who also did very interesting work, though he is less famous—but they didn't have children. They lived on Fillmore Street in San Francisco when the Fillmore area was home to a collection of counter-culture artists and poets associated with the Beat Generation.
 |
| The Verónica, 1957 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
DeFeo's early work used oil paint but she used a special powder to thicken it to the texture of mud so that she could shape it into different forms with a palette knife. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has one of her best works in this mode, called The Veronica. Here the paint is shaped into swirls that evoke the flashing movements of a matador's cape.
 |
| The Jewel, 1958 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
In a work called The Jewel, DeFeo shaped the paint in a radiating form. This work is 10 feet tall and almost 5 feet wide. It combines rough brushstrokes with precise edges. She abandoned it after a year's work because she became obsessed with another project; she didn't exhibit it until several years later. The darkness seems to burst into light, like the Big Bang.
 |
| The Rose, 1958-1966 Whitney Museum of Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
Her most famous work by far is known as The Rose, though it went by different names during the eight years that she worked on it. It became famous from photographs made while she was working. She created it in the center section of a bay window at her studio on Fillmore Street, so daylight streamed through the smaller panels on either side. It is 11 feet tall and 8 feet wide. She mixed a powder with the paint that had a sparkle like mica. She slathered thick layers of this mixture on the backboard, then carved away some of the material, leaving canyon-like formations arranged around a center point. Her innovation was to combine the techniques of oil painting with those of sculpture. The painting's thickness varies from 8 inches at the top to 11 inches at the bottom. The work weighs about 1800 pounds. The key characteristic of The Rose is the union of opposites, the roughness of lava rock with the precision of the rays from a star, the earthly with the celestial, like a star bursting from a volcano. It is owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and was featured prominently in their exhibit surveying the history of American art in the twentieth century.
By the time DeFeo stopped working on the The Rose, her health was depleted, her marriage was on the rocks, and she had literally lost her reason for living. She retreated to a remote location in Marin County, and abandoned art-making for a few years in order to nurse herself back to health. While she recovered, she occupied herself with photography, as a form of record-keeping.
 |
| Water Goggles, 1977 Internet |
When she resumed making art, she tried to move in the opposite direction from her most famous work. Instead of expressing an inner image or intuition, she dwelt on real objects, such as her swim goggles. Instead of using heavy impasto, her brushwork became flat. Instead of radiating forms, she began to look at other universal patterns, such as circles and triangles.
 |
| Crescent Bridge II, 1970-72 Internet |
One result of neglecting herself while she was obsessed with The Rose was that she lost several teeth; she is famous for her studies of the bridgework she required, such as a drawing called Crescent Bridge. By including two of her own teeth with the artificial teeth, the device bridges the world between natural and artificial forms. This is a good example of conceptual painting. Her technique of reversing darks and lights, as in the negative of a photo, makes the image look like a landscape in outer space, thus combining everyday reality with universal understanding.
 |
| Detail, Snake River Canyon, 1974 Acrylic, 10 x 15 inches San José Museum of Art sjmusart.org |
As DeFeo got back into making art, her work continued to combine dichotomies. Detail, Snake River Canyon, 1974, is a small detail of a small photograph of a close-up of a leaf. It is painted with inverted blacks and whites, like the negative of a photograph. It illustrates the concept that the pattern of veins in a leaf is much like the pattern of water flowing in a river canyon. Drips and streaky brushstrokes show that it is a painting, not a negative photograph.
 |
| Untitled, from the series Shoe Tree, 1977 San Jose Museum of Art sjmusart.org |
Seeking an object that was both lowly and supportive, DeFeo did a number of studies of shoe trees. Shoe trees are devices that are placed in expensive leather shoes to hold their shape when they are not being worn. When she depicted a Shoe Tree, she added tendrils and leaves, as though it really were a tree, like a sort of joke.
 |
| Firesign, 1984 oil, 5 ft tall x 8 ft wide San Jose Museum of Art Flickr.com |
In the 1980s, DeFeo resumed making more ambitious oil paintings. Not wanting to pile up paint in order to express dimensionality as she had before, in Fire Sign, from 1984, she explored various ways of creating illusionistic space in two dimensions. The image uses precise edges but the brushstrokes vary from invisible to messy. Overlapping triangular shapes keep the eye moving around the canvas, but no shape is thoroughly resolved.
Jay DeFeo, 1928-1989
 |
| Viola Frey, 1981 |
Sculptor Viola Frey grew up on a vineyard in Lodi, CA, and received her Bachelor's Degree in Fine arts at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. For graduate work, Frey moved to the east coast to study advanced techniques in ceramics. When she returned to the Bay Area, she worked as an accountant at Macy's in San Francisco for ten years, developing new techniques in making sculpture from clay in her spare time. In 1971 she secured a full-time teaching position at her alma mater, CCAC, freeing her to devote herself to sculpture.
The Oakland Museum of California has one of her most innovative works, called Pink Lady, from 1965. A free-standing, life-size figure sculpture made of glazed ceramic was a unique technical challenge. The style is California funk: imperfect, a little gross, and comical. Blunt comedy was a new value for art. Frey was part of a trend to employ ceramic techniques for sculpture, which tended to be funky and comical.
The life-size figures in Double Self, from 1978, are self-portraits. You can see her long braid and spattered smock. The two figures appear to be arguing with each other, or at least, chatting. Frey didn't marry or have children. Her life partner was Charles Fiske, who was also a ceramics instructor at CCAC.
Frey innovated the use of ceramic for monumental figures, such as Man Observing II, from 1984, which belongs to the deYoung museum. She built these outsize figures in sections that could be fired separately in a kiln. Their great height reduces the viewer to the size of a pre-teen. She was also among the first sculptors to use the surface of a figure for abstract painting.
Frey’s monumental male figures were collected by many museums. Ethnic Man, from 1991, is puzzling because his skin is not dark; the only indicator of ethnicity is somewhat thicker lips. With his dull expression, he looks pretty much like any anonymous, inscrutable businessman.
In another innovation, Frey treated the male nude on a monumental scale, in a comical pin-up pose, in Homage, 1985-1987. She mitigated the shock value of nudity by painting the figure with colorful, abstract designs.
 |
| Pink Lady, 1965 Oakland Museum of California Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
The Oakland Museum of California has one of her most innovative works, called Pink Lady, from 1965. A free-standing, life-size figure sculpture made of glazed ceramic was a unique technical challenge. The style is California funk: imperfect, a little gross, and comical. Blunt comedy was a new value for art. Frey was part of a trend to employ ceramic techniques for sculpture, which tended to be funky and comical.
 |
| Double Self, 1978 violafrey.org |
The life-size figures in Double Self, from 1978, are self-portraits. You can see her long braid and spattered smock. The two figures appear to be arguing with each other, or at least, chatting. Frey didn't marry or have children. Her life partner was Charles Fiske, who was also a ceramics instructor at CCAC.
 |
| Man Observing II, 1984 De Young Museum Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
Frey innovated the use of ceramic for monumental figures, such as Man Observing II, from 1984, which belongs to the deYoung museum. She built these outsize figures in sections that could be fired separately in a kiln. Their great height reduces the viewer to the size of a pre-teen. She was also among the first sculptors to use the surface of a figure for abstract painting.
 |
| Ethnic Man, 1991 Utah Museum of Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
Frey’s monumental male figures were collected by many museums. Ethnic Man, from 1991, is puzzling because his skin is not dark; the only indicator of ethnicity is somewhat thicker lips. With his dull expression, he looks pretty much like any anonymous, inscrutable businessman.
 |
| Homage, 1985-1987 about 8 feet long di Rosa Collection, Napa, CA violafrey.org |
In another innovation, Frey treated the male nude on a monumental scale, in a comical pin-up pose, in Homage, 1985-1987. She mitigated the shock value of nudity by painting the figure with colorful, abstract designs.
 |
| American Nude Series (Woman with Elbow on Raise Knee), 1994 Oakland Museum of California Photo by Dan L. Smith |
By contrast, in Woman with Elbow on Raised Knee, from 1994, Frey created a monumental female nude that is seated, alert, observant, and modestly hiding her sex. This figure is 7 feet tall, seated, so it would be very tall standing. The painted surface varies from descriptive to decorative.
 |
| The World and The Woman, 1992 almost 12 feel long violafrey.org |
In The World and The Woman, Frey created great tension by showing a stylized and decorative globe with a monumental seated female nude. The two figures take up almost 12 feet of space. Is she resting against the globe, or is it pushing against her? Is she in control of the situation, or anxious about her position?
Joan Brown, 1938-1990
 |
| Joan Brown, 1980 Photo by Mimi Jacobs joanbrownestate.org |
Painter Joan Brown was born Joan Beatty into a Catholic family in San Francisco. Her father drank heavily, her mother who was depressed and suicidal, and her grandmother shared their cramped apartment. Joan attended Catholic schools but when it came time for college she was attracted by the Bohemian atmosphere of San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned both Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Art. She joined the artists of the Beat Generation in the late 1950s, and lived next door to Jay DeFeo while she was working on The Rose. By the age of 21 Joan was already represented by a gallery in New York, making her the envy of the rest of the struggling artists in her circle.
 |
| Self-Portrait at Age 42, 1980 Joan Brown Estate |
Joan was remarkable for her active romantic life which eventually extended to four marriages. Joan was married to fellow student William H. Brown from age 18 to 22, while she was at the Art Institute. They lived on Fillmore Street, in the heart of Beatnik culture, next door to Jay DeFeo and Wally Hedrick.
From age 24 to 28, Brown was married to Manuel Neri, a prominent sculptor and teacher at San Francisco Art Institute; they had a son named Noel.
From age 30 to 37, she was married to Gordon Cook, a painter whose austere works are seldom seen.
At the age of 42, she married a lawyer named Michael Hebel. Their marriage lasted tenyears, until her untimely death at the age of 52.
 |
| Young Girl, 1962 de Young Museum Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
Brown’s early work was trendy. Like her teachers, she combined figuration with features of abstract expressionism. She used thick paint and crudely expressive brush strokes.
 |
| Noel and Bob, 1964 de Young Museum Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
Brown's principal theme was her own life, her family, and her activities. Her use of domestic imagery and autobiographical narrative was an innovation in American art, although Frida Kahlo had worked with similar material in Mexico. Brown's son Noel was a frequent subject, along with a succession of pet dogs.
 |
| Wolf in Studio, 1972 Crocker Art Museum Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
By the 1970s, expressionistic brushwork had gone out of style. Brown's style became flatter and more descriptive. Her palette lightened and her figures carried more symbolism. In Wolf in Studio, from 1970, a threatening black dog seems to be barring the way for the artist, and the viewer as well.
 |
| Self-Portrait with Swimming Coach Charlie Sava, 1974 Denver Museum of Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
During this period, while she was in her thirties and married to artist Gordon Cook, one of Brown's major subjects was swimming. She had been swimming in San Francisco Bay for most of her life and had competed in amateur swims for many years. In 1972 she began training with a famous swimming coach with a goal of competing in the Alcatraz Swim—a 1 1/2 mile race from Alcatraz Island to the beach in the San Francisco.
 |
| After the Alcatraz Swim 1, 1975 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
In her first try, she and the other swimmers were swamped by waves from a passing freighter, and she had to be rescued. Two years later, she successfully finished the Alcatraz Swim.
 |
| Pine Tree Obelisk, 1987 Sidney G. Walton Square, Embarcadero, S.F. Internet photo |
Around this time, Brown turned from painting to sculpture. She specialized in obelisks that were covered with tile and decorated with animal and plant designs. In all, she made about a dozen obelisks that were commissioned for public spaces. There is one of these in Walton Square, on the Embarcadero, in San Francisco, and another in Rincon Center nearby.
 |
| Sketch for Obelisk for Eternal Heritage Museum Internet photo |
In the autumn of 1990, Brown traveled to India to help with the installation of an obelisk she had designed for Sai Baba's Eternal Heritage Museum. While they were working, a concrete turret in the museum collapsed, instantly killing Joan and 2 assistants from California, and destroying the obelisk. She was 52.
Hung Liu, 1948—still living
 |
| A Third World, 1994 from Revolutionary Self-Portraits, Santa Barbara Museum of Art Internet photo |
Painter Hung Liu was born in China in 1948. She was a good student, but when she was college-age, the Cultural Revolution took place in China, and she was sent to labor in a remote village for four years. Later she was allowed to attend Beijing Teachers College, where she earned a Bachelor's in Fine Arts in 1981. For the next few years she taught art for children at elite school, and on television as well.
Liu married an architect when she was 29, but parted from him in less than a year. From that marriage, she bore a son, named Ling Chen.
In 1984, when she was 36, Liu was was allowed to leave China to study at UC San Diego, where she had been awarded a full scholarship; she earned her MFA there. She married fellow student Jeff Kelly, who was a historian and curator of Chinese Art. They brought her son to the U.S. to live with them.
She went on to teach at Mills College in Oakland for 20 years; she retired from teaching in 2014 but she is still active artist.
 |
| Chinese Profile II, 1998 San Jose Museum of Art Internet Photo |
In the U.S., Liu has specialized in paintings based on historical Chinese photographs. In works like Chinese Profile II, from 1998, she combined realistic images with classically rendered birds, flowers, and calligraphy. She washed her images in veils of dripping linseed oil. This “weeping realism” symbolizes sadness and the erosion of the past.
 |
| Shoemakers, 1999 Crocker Art Museum Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
In the painting called Shoemakers, from 1999, the figures are drawn from an old photo, but the background shows temple hangings of Chinese deities, and the foreground has an arrangement of birds and bamboo. The whole is integrated and blurred by drips and decorative circles.
 |
| Sister, 2000 National Museum of Women in the Arts Internet photo |
The haunting image called Sister, from 2000, is again based on an old photo. Instead of oil drips there is a background that appears to be old, discolored paper that is covered in columns of Chinese writing and what appear to be accidental splotches of color. The image is further complicated by a bird, an insect and several shipping labels or stamps.
 |
| The Botanist, 2013 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Photo by Jan Looper Smith |
The male figure in The Botanist, from 2013, seems to project more dignity and stability than Liu's female figures, and he is not blurred by drips. This suggests he had a significant role in life and received recognition for his studies of plants, which Liu rendered traditionally. To show that this is a modern painting, Liu created an abstract background, blurred by drips, and constructed like a collage.
 |
| Detail of Silver River, 2013 Site-specific mural at San Jose Museum of Art Internet photo |
In 2013 three art museums in the Bay Area paid tribute to Liu. Mills College Art Museum and the Oakland Museum of California presented simultaneous exhibits of her work. The San Jose Museum of Art commissioned a mural called Silver River, which Liu painted on site in the second-floor foyer. This is a small detail of a very large work.
 |
| Allentown, 2015 Internet photo |
Although the majority of her imagery is Chinese, Liu also treats more universal subjects. Recently, she had a long phase of painting large images of dandelions. She said she painted the dandelion because it was unlovely and unwanted, in the U.S. as well as China. The blurry, dripping background conveys the sadness of rejection. However, the feathery figure is so vibrant that you realize it is full of seed pods, ready to fly away to freedom and procreation. This example is mysteriously called Allentown, from 2015. One possible association is with Allentown, Pennsylvania, where the Liberty Bell was hidden from the British during the American Revolution.
 |
| Hung Liu's website; no title given |
Liu has not forgotten the experience of being treated like a work animal. In 2016 she painted a devastating image of bent female laborers pulling an unseen load. They do not have harnesses; the restraining lines are attached to their clothes. They are pushing forward, but something is holding them back.
Five Bay Area Women Artists have contributed important innovations to the history of American art.
Sculptor Ruth Asawa was especially known for innovating the use of wire for sculpture and for creating totally new shapes.
Sculptor Viola Frey was an innovator in the use of ceramic techniques for fine art, for using sculpture as a surface for abstract painting, and for creating monumental figures.
Painter Hung Liu immigrated to the U.S. from China when she was 36. She innovated a sort of "weeping realism" in which abstract patterns are combined with traditional Chinese images.The Bay Area can feel proud of being the home to these talented and innovative artists.
