Emerson Woelffer [b. 1914: Chicago, Illinois – d. 2003: Los Angeles, California]
watercolor,
Gift of the Gertrude Abercrombie Estate
Collection of the Illinois State Museum
Woelffer studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and quickly developed an abstract expressionist’s visual vocabulary, combining automatic imagery and a gestural painting style. He was teaching at the Institute of Design, the successor to Lazlo Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus when he was included in the landmark Art Institute exhibition Abstract and Surrealist American Art exhibition in 1947. He continued to explore modernist ideas about abstraction after his move to California in 1949, exhibiting regularly until his death in 2003 and earning the reputation of being the “grandfather of West Coast abstraction.”