Woelffer, Emerson (1914-2003) — Emerson Woelffer Exhibition Poster

Los Angeles: Paul Kantor Gallery. 1957. Silkscreen. 25.5 x 19 inches. Stains and repaired tears; mounted on a support sheet. LAMA BLOG Emerson Woelffer, Postwar Renaissance Man April 26, 2016 A self-described "abstract surrealist," the painter, collagist, and teacher Emerson Woelffer (1914-2003) was in many ways the very ideal of a postwar American artist. His distinctive style of Abstract Expressionism was inflected by his many and varied interests and experiences. He was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago before becoming employed in the WPA artist's program and then as a teacher at László Moholy-Nagy's Institute of Design in Chicago. Woelffer also lived and worked for a period in Mexico and in Italy; played jazz drums; and collected ethnographic art as well as cars. A close friend of Robert Motherwell and Buckminster Fuller, he was invited to teach at the storied Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1949. Woelffer came to Los Angeles a decade later and, upon taking a position as an instructor at the Chouinard Art Institute, became mentor to an impressive roster of devoted students that included Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha, Joe Goode, and Charles Arnoldi. Provenance: Peter Howard, Serendipity Books. Berkeley. .