Fault Lines: Reshaping Bay Area Figuration

Fault Lines: Reshaping Bay Area Figuration tells an essential Northern California story by examining both the movement’s celebrated legacy and the artists historically left out of its dominant narrative, through rarely seen paintings, sculptures, prints, and archival material.

Fault Lines approaches Bay Area Figuration from the 1950s to early 1970s as a site of proximity and difference, where artists worked alongside one another while navigating distinct social, economic, and institutional conditions. Gender, race, and class influenced not only who received recognition but also what kinds of lives could be depicted. While some artists portrayed figures at leisure and in repose, others focused on family life, labor, civil unrest, and political struggle.

Bringing these works into dialogue for the first time, Fault Lines reveals the tensions and gaps within the historical record that have shaped how postwar figuration in Northern California has been understood, collected, and remembered. Drawing upon the Anderson Collection’s commitment to Bay Area Figuration, the exhibition is anchored by works from Richard Diebenkorn, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, and David Park, while foregrounding artists whose contributions expand the narrative, including Henrietta Berk, James Leong, Marie Johnson-Calloway, Linda Lomahaftewa, Raymond Saunders, and Fritz Scholder. Fault Lines presents contrasting realities from these transformative decades, reframing the movement within the social, cultural, and political realities of postwar America while centering voices long excluded from its history.

Fault Lines: Reshaping Bay Area Figuration is curated by Trisha Lagaso Goldberg.