Works Available

Since his participation in the influential Dynaton group in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1950’s with Gordon Onslow Ford and Wolfgang Paalen, Lee Mullican has played an important role in the art communities of both Northern and Southern California.

Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma in 1919, Mullican developed an early interest in Native American art. This led to a lifetime involvement with ethnic, primitive and folk art forms. He said that his initial sense of abstraction stemmed from his work during World War II as a topographical draftsman using aerial photography and mapping techniques. Moving to the Bay Area in 1947, Mullican was singled out by the San Francisco Museum of Art for one-man shows and for the celebrated Dynaton exhibition of 1951. When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presented the exhibition Dynaton Revisited in 1977, it called the Dynaton movement “a Bay Area alternative to the New York School of 1950.”

Lee Mullican’s one-man exhibitions have appeared at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (retrospective, 1980), Pasadena Art Museum, Willard Gallery, New York, and in the Western United States and Europe. His paintings and sculpture are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Paris, San Francisco Museum of Art, and Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., among others.

Born
Chickasha, Oklahoma, 1919

Education
1937-39 Abilene Christian College, Texas
1939-41 University of Oklahoma, Norman
1941 Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri
Studied with Fletcher Martin and Stanley Hayter
Formed Dynaton movement with Wolfgang Paalen and Gordon Onslow Ford in San Francisco in 1951
Guggenheim Fellowship (painting), 1959-1960

One Man Exhibitions
1995 “Lee Mullican,” Pavilion at the Botanical Garden, Munich, Germany
1993 “Pueblo Drawings,” Thibaud Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, California
1993 “Lee Mullican, Art of the Possible,” University of New Mexico, Hardwood Foundation, Taos, New Mexico
1989 Lee Mullican,” Heritage Museum, Santa Monica, California
1989 “Tribal Shots,” Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1987 “New Painting and Sculpture,” Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, California
1986 “Mullican at LACE,” Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California
1985 Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1985 “Lee Mullican,” Santa Monica Heritage Museum, Santa Monica, California
1980 “Lee Mullican, Selected Works, 1948-1980,” Galeried Schreiner, Based/New York and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
1980 “Lee Mullican: Retrospective,” Los Angeles Municipal Galleries, Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles, California
1976 & 1973 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California
1971 Jodi Scully Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1969 “Lee Mullican Paintings 1965-1969,” UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California
1968 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
1967 Oklahoma Art Center (retrospective), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
1950-1967 Willard Gallery, New York, New York (numerous exhibitions)
1966 Esther Bear Gallery, Santa Barbara, California
1965 & 1949 San Francisco Museum of Art, California
1965 Silvan Simone Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1964 Art Gallery, Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles, California
1963 Rose Rabow Gallery, San Francisco, California
1961 Pasadena Art Museum (retrospective), Pasadena, California
1959 Santa Monica Art Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1958 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
1955 Alexander Rabow Gallery, San Francisco, California
1954 Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills, California
1953 Gump’s Gallery, San Francisco, California
1951 Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma
1951 Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
1949 San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California
Selected Group Exhibitions
1995-1996 “Fifteen Profiles: Distinguished California Modernists,” Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, California
1995 “Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surreality in Early California Art,” Wight Gallery, University of California at Los Angeles, California
1992 “Paintings of the Inner World, Color in Space,” Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1992 “Dynaton, Before and Beyond,” Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California
1992 “Light and Color – Dynaton Painters,” Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1990 “Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Moderns 1920-1950,” Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
1989 “Mullican & Mullican,” Jonson Gallery, University Art Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
1988 “Computer Art,” IBM Gallery, Syracuse University, New York, New York
1988 “Moderns in Mind,” A Rothko Foundation Exhibit, Artists Space, New York
1987 “Visions of Inner Space,” Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, California
1987 “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985,” Hague Eemeente Museum, Netherlands
1986 “Moderns in Mind,” Artists Space, New York, New York
1986 “Dede Bazyk/Lee Mullican,” LACE, Los Angeles, California
1986 “New California Painting,” Rancho Santiago College Art Gallery, Santa Ana, California
1986 “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
1985 “Sunshine and Shadow,” Fisher Art Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
1985 “Sculptors and their Graphics,” Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1984 “Surrealism in California,” Fisher Art Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
1983 “Drawings by Painters,” Oakland Museum, Oakland, California
1982 “Exhibition of Contemporary L.A. Artists,” Nagoya City Museum, Nagoya, Japan
1982 “L.A.: Contemporary Paintings,” Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1981 “Abstraction in L.A., 1950-1980,” University of California, Irvine, California
1980 “Contemporary Painting in California,” High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
1980 “California Painting – The Essential Modernist Framework,” California State University, Los Angeles, California
1980 “History of California Art,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
1980 “Light and Color: Images from New Mexico,” Sheldon Memorial Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska
1977 “Painting & Sculpture,” Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, California
1977 “Five Footnotes to Modern Art History: Dynaton Revisited,” L.A. County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
1977 “Private Images – Photographs by Painters,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
1976 “Paintings and Drawings in the Muswum’s Collection,” Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
1972 “Tamarind: A Renaissance of Lithography,” The International Exhibitions Foundation
1969 “West Coast, 1945-1969,” Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California
1967 “10 Selected Artists,” Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa
1967 Biennial, Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1966 “Some Continuing Directions,” selected by Mr. And Mrs. Gifford Phillips, Balboa Pavilion, Newport Beach, California
1966 Centenaire de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, France
1965 “Tamarind Artists,” Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, California
1964 Art Gallery, Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles, California
1961 “50 California Artists,” Whitney Museum, New York
1961 “New Object,” Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California
1961 Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1955 III Bienal, Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, Brazil
1953 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
1953 Detroit Museum of Art, Detroit, Michigan
1951 “Dynaton,” San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California
1951 Stanford Art Gallery, Stanford University, Stanford, California
1951 “American Painting Today,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
1951 The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
1951 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
1950 “American Painting Today, 1950,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Selected Public Collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art Paris
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Public Collections, Newport Harbor Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
Denver Art Museum, Colorado
Oakland Museum, California
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana

Teaching Experience
1962 University of California, Los Angeles, California
1961 University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

Awards
1964-65 Fellowship, Tamarind Lithograph Workshop, Los Angeles, California
1963 Institute of Creative Arts, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
1959-60 Guggenheim Fellowship