Untitled

Frank Lobdell

In the years immediately following World War II - in which Lobdell was among the soldiers of the 701st Battalion that discovered the horrific Gardelegen Massacre - Lobdell's work drew from a dark well. Much of his imagery reflected an internal battle, one in which he searched for meaning in art after it had been dashed at the heels of the inhumanity he witnessed. By the early 1950s he was finding inspiration in the lithograph medium. Wrote Timothy Burgard, curator for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2013: "In the ensuing decades, [Lobdell] worked to resurrect the human figure - which had been physically and psychically traumatized during the war - utilizing a vocabulary of archetypal themes and abstract symbols. ...Tempering an existential sensibility with a transcendent humanism, he forged a unique pictorial language for our modern age."

In this early black and white work, he works to pull forth that abstract symbolism, without the burden of a narrative. Something nearly like a figure emerges to the left, coming out of the textured shadows to the right. There is intention in the lines that he has laid down, but an overall sense of the artist wanting to simply connect with the medium is what emerges from the stone. An elegant, moody piece from an artist who helped establish the Bay Area as a hub for Abstract Expressionism.