de Young Museum

This exhibition of views of San Francisco, drawn from the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museum, celebrates the 150th anniversary of the founding of the city. Depicted and reflected here are many of the landmarks and events most associated with San Francisco over the last century and a half, among them the physical geography of the bay and the peninsula, the 1906 earthquake and fire and its aftermath, the Great Depression, the building of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and the constant making and remaking of the city and its neighborhoods.

This exhibition showcases 11 groundbreaking, large-scale woodcuts created between 1952 and 1963 by the original, independent, and often controversial American artist Leonard Baskin. A renowned sculptor, printmaker, and book designer, Baskin has always followed his own unique artistic vision, and rejects the ideas, trends, and practices of the mainstream contemporary art world.

In 1933 the promising career of the young Berlin artist John Gutmann (1905-1998), a painter and art instructor, was abruptly suspended. Realizing that there was no future for him in Germany, Gutmann sought a new beginning. A friend advised him, "Don't stay in Europe. The only country you want to go is the U.S., the only state is California, and the only city, is San Francisco."

The first major retrospective of Chiura Obata's work since 1977, this exhibition presents 100 of the renowned Bay Area artist's sumi-e (Japanese ink and brush paintings), large-scale scrolls, and color woodblock prints, as well as a selection of the artist's own materials, including his brushes, palette, and hand-ground pigments. Obata (1885-1975), who studied painting in Japan from the age of seven, emigrated to San Francisco in 1903, and his earliest works include firsthand renderings of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906.