Ode to George Stillman

Byron McClintock

Photographer, printmaker, and painter George Stillman was a contemporary of Byron McClintock, and was a key figure in the San Francisco Abstract Expressionism scene at its height in the 1940s and ‘50s. He was a part of the “Sausalito Six,” helping to make the Bay Area a beacon of leading-edge visual creativity in a tumultuous, pivotal time. McClintock tended bar at the famous bar Vesuvio’s Cafe in North Beach during World War II, and was privy to the happenings of the local poets, musicians, and artists as the neighborhood evolved from a quiet Italian enclave to the pulse of the modern West Coast age.

In the color mezzotint, “Ode to George Stillman,” we see McClintock’s work from his second age of creativity, after he had been rediscovered by New York collector Charles Dean in the early 1990s, and encouraged to revisit printmaking. His chosen palette and the movement he portrays within the non-representational hold the assured qualities of someone who has long been familiar with the medium, its possibilities, and its power; in it, there is not just an homage to a long lost friend, but to an era.