di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art maintains a permanent collection of works by Northern California artists that was originally collected by Rene di Rosa (1919-2010) and Veronica di Rosa (1934–1991). The collection contains notable works by artists living or working in the San Francisco Bay Area from mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first century, highlighting a story of experimentation of the artists of the region. It is displayed in part, on a rotating basis, in the galleries at di Rosa.
This page represents a just a portion of di Rosa’s rich permanent collection. Stay tuned as we continue to populate this page with artworks from our collection.
di Rosa strives to be a resource for educators, students and lifelong learners. For research inquiries, please contact curatorial@dirosaart.org.
Coffee Gallery, San Francisco, 1960
Photograph
Man and woman in conversation; man is Len Monroe, woman "Linda Lovely"
41
Gelatin silver print
Photographic Art
AR0041
Imogen Cunningham
Purchase
Imogen Cunningham
1960
Recto: graphite; Lower right; Imogen Cunningham 1960
Framed
18-5/8 in
19 in
1-3/4 in
Object
9-3/4 in
10-1/2 in
Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times (Part 1)
January 27 - Sunday, May 27, 2018, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa
Curator
2016
Born in Portland in 1883 (d. 1976), Imogen Cunningham studied chemistry and photography in Seattle, where she exhibited frequently, leading to her first solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1914. The artist landed in the Bay Area in 1920 where she continued to her astute photographic experiments and explorations across subject matters and techniques, supporting herself by doing commercial photography and eventually teaching. In 1932, Cunningham co-founded the group f/64, a group which included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, among others. During the war years, she set up a studio in her San Francisco apartment in North Beach and turned her focus to documentary photography. Though she is regarded prominently for her depictions of botanicals, industrial landscapes, and nudes, her large body of documentary work contains remarkable twentieth century portraits, suffused with her expert technical hand and perceptive eye. Coffee Gallery, San Francisco, 1960 (1960) was taken at a venue in North Beach, near her apartment, during a time when Lawrence Ferlinghetti could be found reading poetry or Janis Joplin performing music.
Collections Manager