Civic Art Collection Focus: Roy De Forest

Civic Art Collection Focus: Roy De Forest marks the first in an ongoing series featuring works from San Francisco's Civic Art Collection. De Forest (February 11, 1930 - May 18, 2007) was closely associated with the Funk and Nut art movements, which emerged out of Northern California's vibrant art scene in the 1960s and 70s. These movements were characterized by their inclusion of humor and fantasy. De Forest abandoned high abstraction, which was popular at the time, in favor of figurative imagery of characters and creatures, primarily dogs and horses, which he combined into narratives set amid candy-colored dreamscapes.

The exhibition will include the early painting Hunters Secret (1965), a lithograph Purple, Red, Black (1969), the large-scale painting Homage to Zane Gray (1978), and Hypothetical Cartoon/Tapestry/Moscone Center/SF (Proposal for the Moscone Convention Center Competition) (1981). The SFAC Galleries' show occurs at the same time as the Oakland Museum of California's Roy De Forest survey, Of Dogs and Other People: The Art of Roy De Forest, on view April 29 - August 20, 2017.