Opening Today: "Abstract Expressionism in Northern California - Artists of the San Francisco Bay Area 1945 - 1964", works on paper.

This exhibition, which opens today, proclaims to be a showing of "Abstract Expressionism in Northern California - Artists of the San Francisco Bay Area 1945 - 1964" and indeed, most of the works we show in the gallery are from this period. On line we are honoring Marian's collection by featuring all 94 works, a number of which were later examples by the artists and a few things that just caught her eye. It is a unique peek into some collectors processes. There are perhaps some mistakes, some lesser images that fill in gaps until a better example can be found and procured, but all together give an insight into that mysterious and singular effort - collecting for pleasure not necessarily resale value.

The exhibition will be in the gallery from March 18 and will run through May 29. Sold works will remain until the show is over. The Annex Galleries is located at 604 College Avenue in Santa Rosa, California and is open Monday through Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm and Sundays by appointment.

Here, once again, is Marian's story:

Marian Louise Schell, educator, painter, and collector, was born to Wayne and Margaret Schell on 9 April 1953 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Marian graduated from the Williamsport Area High School in 1971. She received a B.F.A. in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1977 where her painting instructors included Julius Hatofsky and Jack Jefferson. In 1980, she earned a teaching credential from San Francisco State University.

Marian was an art teacher at Mission High School and Lincoln High School, for the San Francisco Unified School District, until her retirement in 2013. She helped to develop and write the Visual Arts Framework for the San Francisco Unified School District and was a co-operative teacher to twenty-four San Francisco State University student teachers. Marian was awarded the Michael Jordan Educator's Grant and the RBC Dain Rauscher Artistic Excellence Award. She worked with the De Young Museum Ambassador program for twenty-eight years and, as chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Lincoln High School, Marian guided and grew the department and implemented Prop H funding.?

Schell was also a painter and maintained a studio at the Industrial Center Building in Sausalito, California. The building, known as the ICB, is a creative and commercial home to painters, sculptors, fabric artists, photographers, and much more. It was built in 1942 as part of a large shipyard complex during World War II. In the 1950s, artists were attracted to its big open spaces, natural light and cheap rents. The artists originally filling these studios had returned from war duties and were receiving the G.I. Bill. Many were part of the burgeoning Abstract Expressionist movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Marian's studio was just down the hall from Walter Kuhlman's and she met him once or twice. The artistic history of this iconic building would certainly have excited an art teacher of Marian's intellect and passion.

She began collecting art as early as 1980 but Marian became an avid collector in the first decade of this century, adding another fifteen or so works in the second decade. She expanded her knowledge and her collection by relying upon art dealers, museums, scholars, collectors, and artists. In 1973, the Oakland Museum (now the Oakland Museum of California) mounted the seminal exhibition, A Period of Exploration: San Francisco 1945-1950 , based upon Mary Fuller's book of the same title. Accompanying the exhibition was a checklist of the artists and many of them (Dorr Bothwell, Edward Corbett, Richard Diebenkorn, James Budd Dixon, Claire Falkenstein, John Grillo, Stanley William Hayter, John Hultberg, Jack Jefferson, James Kelly, Walter Kuhlman, Frank Lobdell, Robert McChesney, Deborah Remington, Clay Spohn, and George Stillman) are represented in Marian's collection.

David Acton, formerly of the Worcester Art Museum, wrote The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints [Marian considered this book her "bible"] and mounted an exhibition of the same title in Spring 2001. Charles R. Dean of New York was one of the the first private collectors to assemble a major collection of American Abstract Expressionist prints and his collection was shown in Fall 2001 at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery of Haverford College in Pennsylvania. A major portion of Dean's collection featured California Abstract Expressionist printmakers. Marian had a checklist of this exhibition as well as a copy of Susan Landauer's essay "Painting Under the Shadow: California Modernism and the Second World War. "

Marian reined in her spending, allowing herself to be outfitted only in black jeans and she carried her lunch to work, so that she could acquire art on a teacher's modest salary. As her knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area's artistic heritage of the 1950s and 1960 deepened, Marian focused her collection on Bay Area Abstract Expressionism , particularly teachers and students at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) between 1945 and 1951. However, she joked that if an artist had coffee in a San Francisco café that would entitle them to be in her collection.

Marian wrote an essay entitled "Smashed Potatoes" about her search for information on and her hopeful acquisition of the individual offset lithographs originally published in the 1948 Drawings portfolio. She began her essay:?"It is important to carefully consider, before beginning a collection, that the collection–whatever it may be–becomes a part of you... and that the collection is also a reflection of what you are...too aggressive or too kind, honest or dishonest, intellectual, passionate, calculating. Maybe you have a bit of money at the right time, are in the right place, know someone who remembers the piece you're looking for...a collection is supposed to bring solace for some."

Like AbEx print collector Charles R. Dean, Marian's extensive records on her collection indicate her excessive dedication to the acquisition of knowledge and art. She kept an Excel spreadsheet on her collection and maintained file folders on the individual artists, collectors, correspondence from artists, published articles on Abstract Expressionism by Peter Frank and Faye Hirsch, and articles on The Sausalito Six. She also maintained written and telephone communications with artists Dorothy McCray and Bryon McClintock. Marian also kept a "little black book" where she noted artists and their works and where they were exhibited or written about. Several pages throughout are wish lists with names of artists and if they were affiliated with the CSFA (California School of Fine Arts). There are several pages devoted to the CSFA between the years 1945 and 1951 where she listed the instructors and students for each school year. It is also apparent that Marian traveled to venues, galleries and museums, to view exhibitions of works by "her" artists.

Marian's husband, Donald Keith Skiles , was a professor of English at Chabot College in Hayward. They lived in a modest apartment on Lake Street in San Francisco which they filled with art and books. Don was a major benefactor to Marian's print collection with gifts for anniversaries, birthdays and holidays.

Marian Schell Skiles died on June 7, 2020. The Annex galleries is honored to be able to offer this collection to the general public for Marians estate.

?To view or purchase work, see other works from this collection use this link to our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/recent/30

Use this link to view our complete inventory on our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory?q