Among these First Generation Bay Area Figurative School artists were David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Rex Ashlock, Elmer Bischoff, Glenn Wessels, Wayne Thiebaud, Raimonds Staprans, and James Weeks.
The "Bridge Generation" included the artists Henrietta Berk, Nathan Oliveira, Theophilus Brown, Paul Wonner, Roland Petersen, John Hultberg, and Frank Lobdell.
Among these Second Generation artists were Bruce McGaw, June Felter, Henry Villierme, Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, and Robert Qualters.
Park was an Abstract Expressionist painter, based in San Francisco, and one of the first to move towards the figurative style of painting.
Park's turn to figurative style baffled some of his colleagues, as at the time, abstract painting was the only way to go for progressive artists.
Some of the earlier works in the exhibition suggest that Park responded to the art of Max Beckmann and his influence is particularly visible in The Band (1955).
Over the years, Park's palette turned towards an ebullient chromaticism, but his carving approach to paint handling could be seen in his work throughout until finally he decided to give up oils in 1959.
Bischoff entered his painting Figure and Red Wall in the Fifth Annual Oil and Sculpture Exhibition at the Richmond Art Center and won the $200 first prize for it.
However, it was a one-person show of paintings and drawings in January 1956 at the California School of Fine Arts gallery that Bischoff believed had the biggest impact on his future.
James Johnson Sweeney's exhibition "Younger American Painters",[8] resulted in his work was extensively shown by dealers in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Wonner's figurative works were displayed in an exhibition held at the California School of Fine Arts gallery late in 1956.
[10] In the 1960s, Roland Petersen embarked on his Picnic series, with their saturated colors, thick layered pigment, and geometric compositions.
An active figure in the Bay Area art scene for over forty years, Petersen has taught generations of artists not only painting but also printmaking and photography.
[12] Berk attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1955 to 1959,[13][14] where she studied with Richard Diebenkorn and Harry Krell.
A retrospective exhibit of her work opened at The Hilbert Museum at Chapman University June 13, 2020, in conjunction with a book on the artist, "In Living Color, The Art & Life of Henrietta Berk", edited by Cindy Johnson and published by Cool Titles.
Bruce McGaw was born in 1935 and was the only artist from the second generation to be included in the 1957 Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting exhibition.
[16] Some of Joan Brown's works are Woman and Dog in Room with Chinese Rug (1975) and Noel at the Table with a Large Bowl of Fruit (1963).
Neri soon dropped his engineering classes and in 1951 started taking courses at the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he officially enrolled in 1952.