Golden Gate Bridge

George Stillman

"Golden Gate Bridge" was done in a couple of proofs only in 1948 when Stillman was 27 years old and attending classes at the California School of Fine Arts while running a photography business in San Francisco. In the early 1980s Stillman printed an edition of 25 which he would sign and number as he sold them. This impression was from his estate.

At the CSFA, as he was exploring abstraction, he made friends with fellow artists Walt Kuhlman, James Budd Dixon, Frank Lobdell, Richard Diebendorn, and John Hultburg. The six artists became known as the "Sausalito Six."

Print curator/scholar David Acton commented on this image on page 72 in his book "The Stamp of Impulse - Abstract Expressionist Prints", Worcester Art Museum, 2001:

"...However, Stillman's rectilinear shapes seem man-made rather than natural. The artist avoided any definition or details that could help identify the image, forcing the viewer back to its abstraction; however, he titled its pendant "Golden Gate", and its parabola curves become the incurved suspension cable of the bridge. This relationship may indicate that the image grew from a local landscape, perhaps over the Sausalito hills beyond the bridge that Stillman often drove over to visit his colleagues. The vertical knolls around the Richmond Bay, often shrouded in ocean fog..."

George Stillman was born in Laramie, Wyoming on 25 February 1921. In 1922, the Stillman family was living in Los Angeles and, by 1930, they had settled in Ontario, California. His precocious curiosity was nurtured by his father, a professional photographer, who allowed him to experiment in his photographic darkroom. At seventeen, Stillman submitted work for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, which won first prize for creative photography.

Stillman attended Chaffey College in Alta Loma, California in 1941 and then enrolled in the University of California Berkeley where he studied chemistry. The U.S. entry into World War II interrupted his studies as he was drafted into military service in 1942.

After his discharge in 1945, Stillman opened a commercial photography studio and enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) under the G.I. Bill. He began to paint and made his first original prints in the lithography class taught by Ray Bertrand at the CSFA. As he was exploring abstraction, he made friends with fellow artists Walt Kuhlman, James Budd Dixon, Frank Lobdell, Richard Diebendorn, and John Hultburg. The six artists became known as the Sausalito Six as some of the artists had studios in the Industrial Center Building, a converted wartime building, in Sausalito. They exhibited at the Seashore Gallery of Modern Art in Sausalito and, in an effort to support their gallery, the six produced the portfolio 'Drawings' in 1948.

Stillman returned to the United States from Mexico in 1955 and accepted the position of producer-director at Arizona State University Television in Tempe. While working at the university he attended classes and received his B.F.A. in 1968 and his M.F.A. in 1970. That same year, he was invited to join the faculty of Columbus College in Georgia where he established the art department. In 1972, Stillman moved to Washington state where he taught at Central Washington State University until his retirement in 1988. Stillman received the National Endowment for the Art Fellowship Award in 1990.