"I believe that art should express the highest aspirations of the communuty in which it's created"...Frank Rowe

"There is a distinctive, moral tone behind all of the diverse things that Rowe does, the notion of the artist as a craftsman in the service of society." - Thomas Albright, San Francisco Chronicle

 

Frank A. Rowe (1921-1985), described by one curator as an "artist-idealist," was a 20th century West Coast artist who fused his lifelong political, social, and environmental concerns with his work as a painter, printmaker, author, educator, and First Amendment activist.

Rowe was born in Portland, Oregon, and lived most of his life in Oregon and California. He developed an early interest in art. His maternal aunt, the Southern California painter Marjory Adams Darling, and her husband, painter and Academy Award-winning art director William Darling, were both artists. As a young man, Rowe greatly admired the work of Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueros, and Diego Rivera. He made the first of several visits to Mexico to study these masters in the late 1930s. Rowe's work was also influenced by German Expressionism; he earned an MFA at Mills College in Oakland, where his teachers included the renowned German artist Max Beckmann.

Rowe's pursuit of art was interrupted by the rise of Fascism and the advent of World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, rising to the rank of First Lieutenant. With the 101st Airborne Division, he parachuted into Normandy as part of the Allied forces' D-Day invasion; he was awarded the Purple Heart, Silver and Bronze Stars. He later served during the Korean Conflict. Rowe's war experiences greatly influenced his work as an artist. Two of his masterworks – the large triptych "H-Hour Minus Five," which hangs in the Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France, and "In the Bois Jacques," depict his memories of battle.

After the war, Rowe settled in San Francisco and continued his work as an artist. He was a member of the Graphic Arts Workshop, a political art collective founded by faculty from the California Labor College. The group printed posters and leaflets in support of human and civil rights causes, and was dedicated to the belief that art could and should help create a more just world.

Rowe began his teaching career at San Francisco State University. It was a short-lived tenure: in 1950, the State of California enacted the Levering Loyalty Oath. The oath, which required signature by all state employees, marked a significant departure from the standard Oath of Allegiance, which Rowe signed. Joined by a small group of instructors that included the celebrated American poet John Beecher, Rowe refused to sign the oath. In a statement to the university's administration, he wrote "My reason for dissent is elementary. I'm loyal to the idea that freedom of speech, press and assembly are the inviolable rights of all men." Rowe and his fellow non-signers were summarily fired and blacklisted; thus began a lengthy battle for reinstatement. He pursued the fight on behalf of himself and others to the California Supreme Court, which in 1967 declared the Levering Oath unconstitutional. In 1980, Rowe wrote and illustrated a memoir about the experience, titled The Enemy Among Us: A Story of Witch-Hunting in the McCarthy Era (Cougar Books). In a foreword to the book, author and civil libertarian Carey McWilliams wrote, "This is the story of just one major episode of the McCarthy period, but it was and is – for we have not heard the last of it – a major chapter. It is a chapter recounted with candor, dignity, and grace; it is told as it should be told, that is, as personal history, with total authenticity." The Enemy Among Us won numerous awards, including the Playboy Foundation's Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in 1981.

While blacklisted, Rowe continued his work as an artist, creating hundreds of paintings, prints, drawings, and multi-media works in his home studios. He worked as a commercial artist for companies including the Emporium, J.C. Penney and Albertsons, moving his family from San Francisco to Sacramento and, eventually, Pleasant Hill, California. In 1965, he wrote Display Fundamentals (The Display Publishing Company), a guide for design and display artists.

Throughout his career, his artistic vision continued to expand, yielding prints and posters depicting 20th century movements: Civil Rights, Peace, Labor, Ecology, the Women's Movement, Farm Workers, the Black Panthers. He created satirical images of demagogues and opportunists, political chicanery and corporate greed. At the same time, much of his work reflected his love of the natural world: a course of study at UC Santa Cruz produced some of his most lyrical landscapes.

Rowe eventually resumed his teaching career. After the Levering Oath was overturned, he returned to the faculty at San Francisco State University before joining the art department at Laney College in Oakland. Tragically, in 1983, while traveling in Mexico, Rowe suffered a diving accident which left him quadriplegic. He nevertheless continued to work, painting with the use of assistive devices and teaching at Laney College until his death in 1985. His wife, Marguerite Rowe, died in 2003. Frank and Marguerite Rowe are survived by two daughters, Nancy Rowe and Georgia Rowe.

Exhibitions include "All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area" at the Oakland Museum of California (2012), "Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present" at the California Historical Society (2009), "California in Relief: A History of Wood and Linocut Prints" at Saint Mary's College (2009), and "As They Saw It: Richard Correll and Frank Rowe – Six Decades of Their Art of Social Conscience" at the Meridian Galley in San Francisco (2005). Rowe's work has been shown in exhibitions at the Oakland Museum of California, the California Historical Society, Mills College, St. Mary's College, the Meridian Gallery and Nanny Goat Hill in San Francisco, Laney College in Oakland, the Civic Arts Gallery in Walnut Creek, and others. His work resides in permanent collections at the Oakland Museum of California, Portland Art Museum in Oregon, Mills College, the Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France, and private collections. Rowe's collected papers are housed in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.