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Social Sharing
Glacier
1949
Born in San Francisco in 1924, Zoe Longfield studied at
the University of California, Berkeley, the California Labor
School, and the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA; later
the San Francisco Art Institute). During Longfield’s tenure
at CSFA in the late 1940s, the school became a center for
Abstract Expressionism on the West Coast, and her teachers
included key practitioners of the style, such as Richard
Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still.
Longfield exhibited Glacier in her December 1949 solo
exhibition at Metart Gallery, a cooperative, artist-run space
that she and several other of Still’s students cofounded in
San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood. With its richly
layered palette, Glacier has a magnetic presence that invites
quiet and prolonged contemplation. Suggesting the craggy
surfaces of its subject, the painting seems to simultaneously
allude to emotional states and the natural world.
- Artist
- Zoe Longfield (1924-2013)
- Title
- Glacier
- Date
- 1949
- Object Type
- Painting
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Overall: 44 x 38 in. (111.76 x 96.52 cm) Framed: 45 x 39 in. (114.3 x 99.06 cm)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, American Art Trust Fund, and partial gift of Linda and David Keaton and Susie Alldredge
- Accession Number
- 2025.35
