Cornelia Schulz: Synthesis
Cornelia Schulz Synthesis
November 9, 2024 - January 11, 2025
Foreword
As an art gallerist, curator, or museum professional, there are always those exhibitions you long to do, but because of circumstances or other reasons they end up on the waiting list. I have just such a list in my working mind running at all times and for many years it has included an exhibition of Cornelia Schulz’s paintings. I cannot tell you the amount of joy and satisfaction there has been in realizing an exhibition from that list, and to be able to do so for an artist I have had the privilege to call my friend for over 15 years.
My first encounter with Cornelia Schulz occurred while I was a student in college. She and another faculty member from UC Davis had been asked to jury the annual student exhibition held at the University Art Gallery. Of the two pieces submitted, only one got in, and at the time I thought the one not selected was more important. But, from that moment I understood the valuable lesson that what others see or value in your work is not always the same as what the artist sees.
Fast forward to a decade later, and I found myself representing Schulz in my first gallery job as an assistant at Patricia Sweetow Gallery. We had gotten to know each other a bit by that time, and our friendship grew then and has ever since. Jump forward again another decade and the circumstances aligned to make the exhibition reproduced in the following pages possible at Paul Thiebaud Gallery.
Cornelia Schulz’s career spans over six decades to date in both painting and sculpture, though her achievements in abstraction have been long overlooked outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. Schulz’s educated began in the 1950s, first at Pasadena City College and then at Los Angeles County Art Institute (now known as Otis College of Art and Design) during a fertile period of experimentation and revolution in that school’s history. In 1957, however, Schulz stepped away from her schooling for ten months to work in a mental health facility in Connecticut. Finding this type of work was not for her, Schulz returned to California to continue her art education, this time at the California School of Fine Arts (later known as the San Francisco Art Institute) where she earned her BFA in Painting in 1960 and her MFA in Welded Steel Sculpture in 1962.
Just after graduation, Schulz married fellow sculptor Robert Hudson (1938-2024), and within two years became a mother. Marriage and motherhood led Schulz to put aside her career as an artist for most of the next decade. This gap also accounts for why she seems to emerge into the art world in the 1970s even though she started much earlier.
Schulz’s return to art making in the late 1960s initially came with a return to sculpture. After a few years though, she moved into painting fully and has not deviated from it for the past five decades. The works featured in her exhibition Synthesis are primarily from the past four years of her production and represent some of the most developed works from her current series of thickly impastoed, shaped canvas paintings.
I give my deepest thanks to Cornelia Schulz, friend and fellow artist, for creating these deeply moving, epic paintings and for entrusting us to exhibit them at Paul Thiebaud Gallery. I would also like to thank Scchulz for her assistance in the creation of this catalogue. In the following pages you will find one of the most unique and insightful essays I have ever read about Cornelia Schulz’s paintings. I thank Mark Van Proyen for agreeing to share this thoughts about Schulz’s works, and for doing so in such a profound and meaningful way.
I also extend great thanks to Patricia Sweetow of Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles for partnering with Paul Thiebaud Gallery to make this show happen.
Lastly, mounting shows and creating catalogues is a collaborative effort from beginning to end, and this exhibition proved no different. I would like to thank the Paul Thiebaud Gallery team –Colleen Casey, Matthew Miller, and Gregory Hemming – for their timeless efforts in making this exhibition and catalogue come to fruition.
Greg Flood, Director December 2024
With a Sudden Vigor They Doth Possess: Recent Painting by Cornelia Schulz
By Mark Van Proyen
For obvious reasons, we have grown comfortable with rigid geometry, perhaps too comfortable. This has to do with two things, the first being that we have acclimated ourselves to living inside of confining structures formed of perpendicular angles. The second thing is that we crave the illusory stability represented by horizontal and vertical organizations of experience. Maybe we can blame gravity for that, but it may also have to do with our irrational discomfort with the invisible geomantic energies flowing through and around durable form like an atmospheric river, applying imperceptible albeit omnipresent pressures to all things in ways that can only be measured by the impalpable terms of geological time. In many traditional Asian cultures, geomancy is the technique that allows people to imagine their relation to geological time’s inevitable triumph over geometric structure. This is revealed in the great landscape traditions of the Song and Yuan dynasties, where the eternal mists of the Yangtse river gorge are pictured in ways that reveal the Yin of the deep valley snaking through Yang of lofty mountains.
Cornelia Schulz’s paintings executed from 2020 to 2024 are very much a part of this geomantic tradition, encapsulating the complex and far-flung flowing of geological energy into compact glimpses that speak volumes about what Henri Bergson called The Elan Vital, that being the vital force that inflects and animates all things. Even though Schulz’s paintings are small, they feel large and even grand in both form and idea, reminding us that size does not always mean the same thing as scale. They update and deviate from earlier Asian precedents in several ways, substituting thickly marbled layers of undiluted oil paint for the aqueous ink washes favored by the ancient Chinese masters. Instead of finding mystical solace in the landscape, they are abstract and non-objective, even though they allude to landscape compositions.
Schulz’s new paintings evidence a wide variety of differing paint applications, indicating the use of unusual tools such as putty knives and other scraping devices. They also evidence a wide variety of velocities with which the paint is applied, adding up to a pulsating effect
that can be likened to respiration or the contraction and relaxation of muscles. This explains the frothy phosphorescence that is revealed by Schulz’s paintings. They all evoke the sublime view of nature that Edmund Burke wrote about almost three centuries ago, highlighting our fascination with nature’s power to compel or destroy us. They accomplish this by resorting to an abstract language that speaks of the ebbing and flowing of pictorial energies simultaneously moving in centipedal and centrifugal directions, like waves surging against and then withdrawing from a rocky shore.
There are geometric elements in Schulz’s paintings, which in some cases serve to stabilize her dynamic compositions. In other cases, we see them being engulfed by rhythmic painterly gestures, like so many cardboard houses crumbling beneath a tsunami. This tension between geometry and geomancy extends to the support structures upon which Schulz paints, which are never perfect rectangles. To varying degrees, they are torqued and contorted in ways suggesting that the geomantic energies of the paint applications have stressed and re-shaped them. I every instance, the paint wins because it is coupled with the desire to overcome stasis, revealing itself as the energetic ex-stasis that defines and redefines solid matter. *
Mark Van Proyen’s visual work and written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith operating within economies of narcissistic reward. From 1985 to 2020, he was a member of the faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute, He has written for Artweek, Art in America, Square Cylinder, Visual Art Source, Art Criticism and Art Ltd
Plate 1:
Point, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 19 x 11 1/2 inches opposite: Point (detail)
Plate 2:
Slab 1, 2020, oil on canvas over wood, 19 x 12 inches opposite: Slab 1 (detail)
Plate 3:
Overpass, 2022, oil on canvas over wood, 18 1/2 x 12 inches opposite: Overpass (detail)
Plate 4:
Ember, 2024, oil on canvas over wood, 22 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches opposite: Ember (detail)
Plate 5:
Red Skirt, 2022, oil on panel over wood, 19 x 12 inches opposite: Red Skirt (detail)
Plate 6:
Red Ralley, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 23 x 14 inches opposite: Red Ralley (detail)
Plate 7:
No Laughing Matter, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 22 x 13 inches opposite: No Laughing Matter (detail)
8:
Plate
Fiber Options, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 19 x 11 inches opposite: Fiber Options (detail)
Plate 9:
, 2024, oil on canvas over wood, 20 1/4 x 13 1/2 inches opposite: InterFray (detail)
InterFray
Plate 10:
Around the Block, 2024, oil on canvas over wood, 23 3/4 x 14 inches opposite: Around the Block (detail)
11:
Plate
D9, 2017, oil on canvas over wood, 12 x 9 inches opposite: D9 (detail)
12:
Plate
Waive, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 19 x 12 inches opposite: Waive (detail)
Plate 13:
Leaving, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 20 3/4 x 12 inches opposite: Leaving (detail)
Plate 14:
Perch, 2023, oil on canvas over wood, 19 x 12 inches opposite: Perch (detail)
Exhibition Checklist
Plate 1: Point 2023 oil on canvas over wood 19 x 11 1/2 inches
Plate 2: Slab 1 2020 oil on canvas over wood 19 x 12 inches
Plate 3: Overpass 2022 oil on canvas over wood 18 1/2 x 12 inches
Plate 4: Ember 2024 oil on canvas over wood 22 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches
Plate 5: Red Skirt 2022 oil on panel over wood 19 x 12 inches
Plate 6: Red Ralley 2023 oil on canvas over wood 23 x 14 inches
Plate 7: No Laughing Matter 2023 oil on canvas over wood 22 x 13 inches
Plate 8: Fiber Options 2023 oil on canvas over wood 19 x 11 inches
Plate 9: InterFray 2024 oil on canvas over wood 20 1/4 x 13 1/2 inches
Plate 10: Around the Block 2024 oil on canvas over wood 23 3/4 x 14 inches
Plate 11: D9 2024 oil on canvas over wood 12 x 9 inches
Works not Exhibited
Plate 12: Waive
2023 oil on canvas over wood 19 x 12 inches
Plate 13: Leaving 2023 oil on canvas over wood 20 3/4 x 12 inches
Plate 14: Perch
2023
oil on canvas over wood 19 x 12 inches
CORNELIA SCHULZ
Born 1936 in Pasadena, CA
Lives and works in Marin County, CA
Education
1962 MFA, in welded steel sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
1960 BFA in painting, California School of Fine Arts (later San Francisco Art Institute), San Francisco, CA
1958 Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design), Los Angeles, CA
1957 University of Southern Califrornia (summer session with Richard Diebenkorn)
1955 Associates Degree, Pasadena City College, Pasadena, CA
Selected Awards
2000 Distinguished Service Award, University of California, Davis
1994 Individual Artists Grants for Painting, Marin Arts Council
1985 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California, Davis
1981 Individual Artist Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C.
1975 SECA Grant Award, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Professional Experience
2002 Professor Emeritus, University of California, Davis
1999-2002 Director, ArtsBridge, K-12 arts outreach, University of California, Davis
2000 Interim Chair, Department of Art, University of California, Davis
1975-2002
Professor of Art, University of California, Davis
1988-1992 Chair, Department of Art, University of California, Davis
1976 Guest Instructor, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
1973-1975 Lecturer, Department of Art, University of California, Davis
1972-1973 Lecturer, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2024 Synthesis, Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Cornelia Schulz: paintings, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Piece A Cake, Spun Smoke, Oakland, CA
2014 Cornelia Schulz: Landscape Series, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA
2012 In Conversation, Robert Hudson & Cornelia Schulz, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2010 Cornelia Schulz: New Paintings, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Project4 Gallery, Washington DC
2009 Cornelia Schulz: Recent Paintings, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2006 Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2004 Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2002 50 Fremont, San Francisco, CA
2001 Recent Paintings, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1998 Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1997 Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis
1985 Janet Steinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Works on Paper, Pence Gallery, Davis, CA
1983 Matrix Gallery, Sacramento, CA
1981 Hansen Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1979 Hansen Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Memorial Union Gallery, University of California, Davis, CA
1978 Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1975 Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1974 Mills College Art Gallery, Mills College, Oakland, CA
1973 University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA
1962 Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024 Summer Sun, Part 2, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2023 ON FIRE, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2022 Absurd Petunias, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Intersect Palm Springs, Palm Springs, CA
2020 Shaw & Co., Gallery 16, San Francisco, CA
2019 Landscape Without Boundaries: Selections from the Jam Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Jam Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA
Art Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2018 Assembled: Julia Couzens, Helen O’Leary, Cornelia Schulz, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
About Abstraction: Bay Area Women Painters, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA
2016 Pulse Miami, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Miami, FL
San Francisco Art Market, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2012 Legends of the Bay Area, William T. Wiley, Cornelia Schulz and Richard Shaw, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, CA
2009 Group Show: Combinations, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Four Former Faculty, Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis
2006 Donna Seager Gallery, San Rafael, CA
Recent Acquisitions, Gatehouse Gallery, di Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA
2002 Sloan and Miyasato, San Francisco, CA
2000 Barry Sakata Gallery, Sacramento, CA
Minimalism; Then and Now. Part II, UC Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
Selected Recent Acquisitions, Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis
2000 San Francisco International Art Expo, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA
1999 San Francisco International Art Expo, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA
1998 Out Inside, Sesnon Gallery, Porter College, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
1997-2000 The Blake House Collection, Blake House, Kensington, CA
1996 Shasta College Art Gallery, Shasta College, Redding, CA
1995 Hudson, Schulz, Shaw, and Shaw: The Stinson Beach Years, Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA
1994 Crocker Kingsley Annual Exhibition, Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA
1993 Group Invitational, Gregory Kondos Gallery, Sacramento City College, Sacramento, CA
1992 East Is East, Pence Gallery, Davis CA
Miniature Invitational, Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA
1991 Sacramento Abstraction, Sacramento City College Art Gallery, Sacramento
1989 14th Annual Exhibition, Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael, CA
1988 Annual Drawing Show, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1987-89
New Work, Natsoulos/Novelozo Gallery, Davis, CA
Diversity and Presence: Women Faculty of the University of California, UC Riverside, traveling to: Fine Arts Gallery, UC Irvine; Mandeville Gallery, UC San Diego; Nelson Gallery, UC Davis; Sesnon Gallery, UC Santa Cruz; College of Creative Studies & Women’s Centers Galleries, UC Santa Barbara
1987 Frontiers of Abstraction, Pritchard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
1986 5 Northern California Artists, Memorial Union Gallery, UC Davis
1984 Selections I, Selections II, Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1982 Major American Artists, California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions (cont.)
1981
Paintings of California Artists, California State University, Hayward, CA
1979 Aspects of Abstraction, Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA
1979 Five From Hansen Fuller Goldeen, Smith Anderson Gallery, Palo Alto, CA
1978
1977
1976
Hansen Fuller Group Show, Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Northern California Artists, Sonoma State College Art Gallery, Rohnert Park
Cornelia Schulz, Inez Storer, Transamerica Building, San Francisco, CA
American River Junior College, Sacramento, CA
Cornelia Schulz, Victor Carasco, ReVision Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
New Women, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT
La Jolla Museum of Art, La Jolla, CA (traveling drawing show)
Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth TX (traveling drawing show)
1975 SECA Award Recipients, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Monterey, CA (traveling drawing show)
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., (traveling drawing show)
Pratt Graphics Center, New York, NY (traveling drawing show)
North, East, South, and Middle Contemporary American Drawings, Moore College of Art Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (origination of traveling drawing show)
Intertices, San Jose Museum of Art, San jose, CA
1974 Drawings, Lester Gallery, Inverness. CA
1963
Sculpture Invitational, Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA
California Sculpture, Kaiser Center, Oakland, CA
1962 Richmond Art Center Invitational, Richmond, CA
Selected Publications and Reviews
2024 Bravo, Tony. “’Cornelia Schulz: Synthesis’ at Paul Thiebaud Gallery”. San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, November 2024.
2022 Baker, Kenneth. “On Fire, Cornelia Schulz 2021- 2018”. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 2021.
2018 Hill, Robin. “Assembled but not resembling, at Patricia Sweetow”. twocoatsofpaint.com, October 29, 2018.
Roth, David M. “Assembled @ Patricia Sweetow”. SquareCylinder, November 2, 2018.
2017 Couzens, Julia. “Cornelia Schulz and Carrie Lederer @ Patricia Sweetow”. SquareCylinder, November 29, 2017.
Morris, Barbara. “About Abstraction @ Bedford”. SquareCylinder, November 28, 2017. Desmarais, Charles. “In the galleries, color everywhere, unconventionally applied”. San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2017.
2015 Morris, Barbara. “Cornelia Schulz”. artillerymag.com, May 5, 2015.
Roth, David M. “Cornelia Schulz @ Spun Smoke”. SquareCylinder, April 15, 2015.
Baker, Kenneth. “Cornelia Schulz @ Spun Smoke”. San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 2015.
2014 Baker, Kenneth. “Schulz, Sultan present grand reminders for art for art’s sake”. San Francisco Chronicle, July 11, 2012.
2012 Baker, Kenneth. “Robert Hudson, Cornelia Schulz on shape, intimacy”. San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2012.
Roth, David M. “Hudson+Schulz @ Sweetow, SquareCylinder, June 18, 2012.
2010 Cheng, Dewitt. “Exhibition at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco”. Visual Art Source, November 30, 2010.
Baker, Kenneth. “Schulz and Bandau”. San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2010.
Roth, David M. “Cornelia Schulz @ Patricia Sweetow”. SquareCylinder, November 11, 2010.
2009 Baker, Kenneth. “Cornelia Schulz @ Patricia Sweetow Gallery”. San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 2009.
2008 Pritikin, Renny. “Cornelia Schulz: Watching for the Third Event”. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 2008.
2006 Baker, Kenneth. “Schulz at Sweetow”. San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 2006.
2004 Baker, Kenneth. “When canvas is as important as the painting”. San Francisco Chronicle, January 17, 2004.
1975 “North, East, South, and Middle Contemporary American Drawings”. Moore College of Art Gallery, 1975.
Public Collections
Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Berkeley, CA
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA
Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis, CA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SMOMFA), San Francisco, CA SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, CA
Cover: Slab 1 (detail), 2020
Rear Cover: No Laughing Matter (detail), 2023
Copyright 2024 Paul Thiebaud Gallery. All Rights Reserved. Images copyright 2024 Cornelia Schulz.
Design: Greg Flood and Matthew Miller
All images, photo: Matthew Miller
No portion of this document may be reproduced or stored without the express written permission of the copyright holder(s).
PAUL THIEBAUD GALLERY