After teaching in Chicago at the Institute of Design and later at the venerable Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Emerson Woelffer moved to Los Angeles to teach at Chouinard and later at Otis, where he was responsible for bringing European modernism to two generations of students. Considered by his pupils, Ed Ruscha and Joe Goode among them, as the grandfather of Los Angeles modernism, Woelffer spanned the divide between abstract expressionism and surrealism. His boldly colored abstractions combine deliberation and chance, artistic gesture and purpose. He was a guest artist at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1969–70, and though his lithographs do not share the relief-like quality of his collages, they do employ the bright colors and abstracted forms so central to Woelffer’s “abstract surrealism,” as he termed it.
Details
- Artist Name: Emerson Woelffer (American, 1914-2003)
- Title: Figure
- Date: 1969
- Medium: Lithograph
- Dimensions: 24 x 18 in. (61.0 x 45.7 cm)
- Publisher: Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc.
- Printer: Hitoshi Takatsuki
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Anonymous Gift, 1972
- Accession Number: P.1972.08.124
- Copyright: © Estate of Emerson Woelffer
Object Information
Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California
- Norton Simon Museum, 2011-10-02 to 2012-04-02
Alternate Realities: Altoon, Diebenkorn, Lobdell, Woelffer
- Norton Simon Museum, 2022-05-13 to 2022-08-22
Additional Artwork by Artist
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