From March 18th through May 29th, 2023, the Annex Galleries will be showing nearly 100 works from the collection of Marian Schell of San Francisco, California. These works on paper attest to the major contribution of Northern California to the Abstract Expressionist movement, from it's controversial beginnings to its meteoric rise. Viewers will find lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, watercolors, and drawings, as well as mixed media works on paper, in this time capsule exhibition.

Marian Schell (1953 - 2020) was a Bay Area artist and art teacher who began collecting art in the early 1980s. She reined in her spending, allowing herself to be outfitted only in black jeans and carrying her lunch to work, so that she could acquire art on a teacher's modest salary. She expanded her knowledge and her collection by relying upon art dealers, museums, scholars, collectors, and artists. Like AbEx print collector Charles R. Dean, Marian's extensive records on her collection indicate her excessive dedication to the acquisition of knowledge and artx. She kept a 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 Byron McClintock, and kept a "little black book" where she noted artists, their works, and where they exhibited or were written about.

As her knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area's artistic heritage of the 1950s and '60s deepened, Marian focused her collection on Bay Area Abstract Expressionism, particularly teachers and students at the California School of Fine Arts between 1945 and 1951. However, she joked that if an artist had coffee in a San Francisco cafe, that would entitle them to be in her collection. In 1973, the Oakland Art 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, including Dorr Bothwell, Edward Corbett, Diebenkorn, James Budd Dixon, Falkenstein, John Grillo, Stanley William Hayter, John Hultberg, Jack Jefferson, James Kelly, Walter Kuhlman, Lobdell, Robert McChesney, Remington, Clay Spohn, and George Stillman, are represented in her collection. 

Marian wrote an essay titled "Smashed Pototes" about her search for information on and her hopeful acquisition of the individual offset lithographs originally published in the 1948 Drawings portfolio (printed in Mill Valley just north of San Francisco, and the first Abstract Expressionist portfolio ever to be published). 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 lot of money at the right time, are in the right place, know someonw who remembers the piece you're looking for... a collection is supposed to bring solace for some."

Viewers are welcome to view the show online or in person. Contact the gallery with any questions at (707) 546-7352.