FOR the art neophyte in search of a style after World War II, the place to be was San Francisco. The California School of Fine Arts, which in the 1930s had brought Diego Rivera to San Francisco, had suddenly burst into life again, this time around two fiery abstract painters, Russian-born Mark Rothko, who was scrubbing canvases with shimmering bands of color, and North Dakota-born Clyfford Still, whose outsize paintings suggested both Western canyons and bark peeled from a tree. Talented younger men (notably Sam Francis and Lawrence Calcagno) spread the Rothko-Still gospel...
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