From the mid-1940s to the early 1960s, San Francisco provided the setting for an important group of Abstract Expressionist painters. This faction is often considered a second-generation spin-off from the New York 'action painters' like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who worked in gestures and drips. Yet this assumption ignores the powerful culture of spontaneity that permeated the arts on both coasts in the years surrounding the Second World War.

This exhibition, curated by SJMA Chief Curator Dr. Susan Landauer, brings together the work in the Museum's collection of artists only now being recognized as pioneers of this movement, including Elmer Bischoff, Ernest Briggs, Edward Corbett, Edward Dugmore, James Kelly, Frank Lobdell, Deborah Remington, John Saccaro, and Hassel Smith.