Theophilius Brown had grown up in an intellectual environment and gone to Yale where he continued to travel in cultural circles.

But when he got to his graduate studio program at Berkeley, everything changed. He almost immediately was in thrall to David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn and was able to sketch with them. And he met the man who was to become his life partner and painting partner: Paul Wonner.

He also went to Europe and was influenced by the Italians like de Chirico and a sense of mystery and allegory began to pervade his work. He painted moons and stars and symbols. Brown joined Wonner in Davis after a year. Both of the artists suggest pre cursors to Eric Fischl with his randy backyards and seasides, per Caroline Jones.

Brown, like Wonner, took figuration a step further and this painting, The Swing, from 1966, still I believe in the collection of the Mardesich Family, loads a dynamism and narrative previously unseen in the more studied, posed works of Gen 1 of Bay Area Figurative.

In The Swing, instead of two men, this is a man pushing a woman, somewhat mysteriously, in the air. It's only after a moment you notice her hanging onto the filament of rope. We are still seaside. The picture plane is bisected at a diagonal cutting across the expanse of blue sky and sand. It is so new and different that it seems almost revolutionary. The man almost looks like a satyr. The woman is bound by rope, even if tenuously. What if she lets go? It's erotic. It's free. It contains movement. And a little thrill.

Alas, very few of Brown's paintings from this period survive.

The couple ended up in Santa Monica and became close with Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the famous Canyon gay couple, among other luminaries, but Brown ended up back in San Francisco. He died in 2012 at 92. When he fact checked his Wikipedia entry, he found his designation as an AbEx painter, 'horseshit". I love that!

With David Park's too early demise, Deibenkorn should have become the Bay Area Figurative group's leader. But like Groucho Marx, he did not want to be a member of any group that would have him even if it was a counter movement to the AbEx painters in ascendance on the East Coast.

So James Weeks (yesterday's post) and those that followed were not as visible nationally but they still were important locally. Paul Wonner was one of these so called 'bridge movement' painters.

Wonner was looser, and more free. In fact he left the Bay Area and moved to Davis, to teach. This painting from 1960 Two Men at the Shore, part of the Lobell Family Collection, depicts Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown(another member of the 'bridge' group) who were in a committed relationship--but maybe this was the reason for the Davis move. It still was not easy to come out as gay in 1960.

I love the acid yellow of this painting. The men have faces, but they are not recognizable, perhaps due to the need for discretion. There are both Parkian and Diebenkornian echoes.

The "narrative richness, psychological nuance and sheer ambiguity of Wonner's figurative works were unmatched" * When Wonner moved to LA, his break with Bay Area Figurative was complete. By then Diebenkorn was in Santa Monica and the Bay Area movement's thrust has dissipated.

*In all posts this week I have been helped by Caroline Jones’s 1989 tome on the group for the SF MoMA exhibition that then traveled east to DC and Philadelphia. Taken with Janet Bishop's excellent catalog for her 2020 David Park show, any reader who wants more info than my scant posts need only see these two volumes. Upcoming: Bishop's show on Joan Brown (a peek into her work tomorrow).