Featuring work by long-time Potrero Hill-based artists Robert Bechtle, Ruth Cravath, Charles Griffin Farr, Bob Hayes, Henri Marie-Rose, and Charles Surendorf side-by-side with work by artists who lovingly portrayed the neighborhood, such as Frank Van Sloun, Pauline Vinson, Lionel Edwards, Theodore Polos, and Marguerite Redman Dorgeloh. 

Attracted by low rents, sunshine, views of the bay, and wide-open spaces, artists throughout the past century made the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco their home. This exhibition gathers together work from the 1920s-1980s by influential artists who lived and worked in Potrero Hill and places it in conversation with additional work by artists who were influenced by the neighborhood’s views, architecture, and residents. 

In addition to the artistic legacy of a neighborhood, this exhibition celebrates a legacy of teaching and art instruction. Artists Robert Bechtle, Rudolph Schaeffer, and Theodore Polos taught at CCA (then known as the School of California Arts and Crafts or California College of Arts and Crafts). Artists Frank Van Sloun and Henri-Marie Rose taught at California School for Fine Arts (later known as the San Francisco Art Institute). Ruth Cravath taught art at Mills College. And Charles Griffin Farr connected and mentored many artists living in Potrero Hill through his weekly Monday morning life drawing sessions that ran for over 30 years. These art instructors, in addition to a collection of artists working in Potrero Hill in the 1930s as part of the New Deal’s Work Projects Administration, use both representation and abstraction to create varying perspectives of Potrero Hill that demonstrate the important role local artists have played in defining and portraying the neighborhood that CCA–soon to open its expanded campus–now calls home. 

This exhibition was organized by Peter Linenthal (director, Potrero Hill Archives Project) and Jaime Austin (director of exhibitions and public programming, CCA), in collaboration with CCA student Anny (Yuyang) Long. The exhibition is accompanied by a “Writers' Corner” featuring books, oral histories, and relevant texts by former residents such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank Herbert, Whitney Chadwick, and more.

Read "Potrero Hill Perspectives: A Neighborhood's Artistic Legacy" by Peter Linenthal, director of the Potrero Hill Archives Project →

Image: Charles Griffin Farr, Potrero Hillside, 1965. Oil on canvas, 55 x 40 inches. Courtesy of the Brotherton Collection.