White Abstract Cubes -- San Francisco Abstract Expressionist School by James McCray

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Stunning white cubes, a substantial abstract expressionist oil painting by James McCray (American, 1912-1993). Unsigned, with his inventory number scheme … Read more Stunning white cubes, a substantial abstract expressionist oil painting by James McCray (American, 1912-1993). Unsigned, with his inventory number scheme on stretcher "C- I-66 for C for Cal' University of California Berkeley,1966. From the estate of James McCray; provenance: David Carlson Collection. Unframed. Image size, 24"H x 30"W.

As one of the second wave of San Francisco abstract expressionists, James McCray abstract work was greatly influenced by his teachers Worth Ryder and John Haley.

James McCray was born in Niles, CA on Oct. 1, 1912. McCray received a scholarship for further study in Pennsylvania at the Barnes Foundation after graduating from UC Berkeley (M.A.).

At UC he was greatly influenced by his teachers Worth Ryder and John Haley. His teaching experience included UC Berkeley (1935-40, 1947-80), California School of Fine Arts (San Francisco) (1940-46), San Francisco Museum of (modern) Art (1941-43), and Santa Barbara College (1951).

An abstract painter, his early works were geometric and later evolved into lyrical abstraction.
"By the mid 1940s, while teaching at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, he developed a unique geometric style. McCray's style is completely different from anything produced around him in the Bay Area at that time. In the 1950s, while he succumbed to the vogue for painterly expression as exemplified by Abstract Expressionism, he returned in the mid-1960s to the format that gave him the most personal satisfaction - abstract design. The later works, however, have more of the feel of the then popular Post-Painterly Geometric Abstraction."
- Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, California Art: 450 Years of Painting and Other Media.
McCray's education encompassed both European and American modernist movements. While at the Barnes Foundation, his strongest influence was the geometric abstraction of Mondrian. By 1945, McCray's geometric abstraction won the coveted Anne Bremer prize and another was exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago's Abstract and Surrealist American Art in 1948. By 1950, McCray turned away from geometry and followed a path toward color field minimalist abstraction. This was similar to Reinhardt, who was also influenced by Mondrian and whom McCray met in 1949 when Reinhardt taught summer school at the California School of Fine Arts.

McCray's work evolved into colorful gestural paintings by the mid to late 1950s. In the early 1960s, his energy flowed into a series of circular colorful hard edge geometric abstractions influenced by the Rythme series of Sonia and Robert Delaunay he had seen while studying aesthetics in Europe during 1938-39 on a Barnes Foundation grant. Notable artists that studied with McCray include Sam Francis and John Grillo. See less