'Still Life' by Douglas McClellan, Bay Area Abstraction, Metropolitan Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Description

Signed lower right, 'DMc', for Douglas McCellan (American, 1921-2016) and painted circa 1975. Additionally signed, verso, titled, 'Still Life' and … more Signed lower right, 'DMc', for Douglas McCellan (American, 1921-2016) and painted circa 1975. Additionally signed, verso, titled, 'Still Life' and bearing old rental reference label.
Displayed in the original oak, strip-line frame.
Framed dimensions: 33 x 49 inches

Professor Emeritus of art at University of California Santa Cruz, Douglas McClellan was an active figure in Bay Area abstraction. Over the course of a long career, McClellan was the recipient of numerous prizes, medals and juried awards. He exhibited widely and with success including at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Purchase Prize), the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work may be found in private and public collections including the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Pasadena Art Museum, among others.

McClellan attended Pasadena City College and the Los Angeles Art Center before serving in the Pacific Theater of World War II as a camouflage artist. After the War, he enrolled at the Colorado Springs Art Institute where he met and, in 1957, married his wife, the artist Marjorie Ness, with whom he was to spend the remainder of his long life. McClellan obtained his Master of Fine Arts at Claremont Graduate School. In addition to his career as a fine artist, McClellan was an influential teacher who, prior to joining UCSC, chaired the art department at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate School Master's Program in Fine Arts. McClellan was a member of the California Watercolor Society and the Los Angeles Art Association.

Reference:
Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 2, p. 2103; et al.

Exhibition History:
Library of Congress (1948); San Francisco Museum of Art (1949, 1952); Corcoran Gallery of Art (1953); Pennsylvania Academy of Arts Ann. (1954); Carnegie Institute ( 1955, 1957); American Federation of Arts (1955); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1949-50, prize, 1952-1953, purchase prize, 1954-1955); Los Angeles County Fair (1949, 1953); National Orange Show (1954, prize); West Coast biennial (1955); Whitney Museum of American Art (1957); Landau Gal. (1953, 1955, 1957); Pasadena Art museum (1954); Riverside, California (1955). less