Zoe Longfield facts for kids

Zoe Longfield (born 1924, died 2013) was an American artist. She was known for her abstract expressionist paintings. She lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She was one of the first artists to create abstract expressionist art. This style became popular in the late 1940s in cities like New York and San Francisco. A photo from 1948 shows her at the California School of Fine Arts. She is with other students, including Frank Lobdell. Even though she was active for only a few years, Zoe made many paintings, prints, and drawings. Her art had a very special and unique look.

Zoe's Early Life

Zoe Longfield was born in San Francisco in 1924. She was the only child of Peter and Tatiana Golovinsky. Her parents were immigrants who came from Russia. They left their home during the Russian Revolution.

After her father passed away, her mother married Maxim Dolgopoloff. He was also from Russia and became Zoe’s stepfather. When Zoe was in high school, she changed her last name. She changed it from Golovinsky to Longfield. This new name was a loose English translation of her stepfather's name, Dolgopoloff.

Zoe's Education

Zoe went to Edward Robeson Taylor Grammar School. Then she attended Portola Junior High School and Balboa High School. She was very athletic. She competed in many ice-skating shows when she was a teenager and in her early twenties.

After finishing high school in 1941, she went to the University of California, Berkeley. She studied there from 1941 to 1944. At Berkeley, she learned painting from Margaret Peterson, John Haley, and Erle Loran. These teachers helped start the "Berkeley School" of abstract expressionism.

After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree, she continued her art studies. She attended the California Labor School from 1946 to 1948. Then, she went to the California School of Fine Arts. This school is now called the San Francisco Art Institute. She studied there from 1947 to 1949.

At the California School of Fine Arts, she had amazing teachers. These included famous artists like Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, Edward Corbett, and Mark Rothko. Zoe was one of the few women in her class. She studied alongside other artists such as Ernest Briggs, Edward Dugmore, and Frank Lobdell.

Zoe's Art and Influence

Clyfford Still, one of Zoe's teachers, believed art should not be about making money. Zoe and eleven other students from his class agreed with this idea. They worked together to open a special art gallery. It was called the Metart Gallery and opened in April 1949.

The name "Metart" came from "metamorphosis" or "metaphysical arts." The gallery was a cooperative. This meant each artist paid a small monthly fee. In return, they could use the whole gallery space for one month each year. This allowed them to show their own artworks.

The Metart Gallery was located in an old laundry building on Bush Street in San Francisco. It was the first of many cooperative art galleries that opened in San Francisco during the 1950s. Artists like Jeremy Anderson, Ernest Briggs, Edward Dugmore, and Zoe Longfield each took a month to display their original works.

Even though the gallery closed after only one year, it was very important. It helped start the art careers of several artists, including Briggs and Dugmore. Art critics like Alfred Frankenstein and R. H. Hagan wrote good reviews about the Metart exhibits in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.

In December 1949, Hagan wrote about Zoe Longfield's show. He said, "Miss Longfield impresses me as one of the most successful." He was talking about artists who used new, free styles with bold colors and shapes. The gallery closed after a final show by Clyfford Still in the spring of 1950. Still's last exhibit was very popular. Soon after, he left San Francisco for New York City.

Zoe experimented with how she applied paint. Sometimes she used thick paint, and other times she used very thin layers. She even used techniques from watercolor painting. She would apply thin washes of oil paint over the white canvas.

Her art used unique shapes. Most of these shapes looked organic, like things found in nature. But sometimes she included shapes that looked more like buildings. Hagan described one of her paintings, "No. 9," as a beautiful mix of blues, blacks, and white. He also liked her "symphonic treatment of bone-like shapes" in another painting, "No. 4."

Zoe Longfield created several important paintings. One is called Untitled (1949). This large painting is part of the Blair Collection of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism. It is planned to be given to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Her work is also featured in the catalog for the Women of Abstract Expressionism exhibit. This exhibit was organized by the Denver Art Museum.

Zoe's Later Life

For most of her life, Zoe Longfield was not widely known as a painter. She passed away in 2013 in San Francisco. She died from heart failure.

People became interested in her work again after 2004. This happened when her painting, Untitled (1949), was shown. It was part of the San Francisco and the Second Wave: The Blair Collection of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum.

Exhibitions

• Metart Galleries, San Francisco, 1949
• San Francisco and the Second Wave, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, 2004; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, 2004–2005; Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, 2005; Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, 2005