Photographs from:
the di Rosa Collection
of Northern California Art

Exhibition Statement

The exhibition represented fifty-five works selected from the prestigious di Rosa Collection in Napa Valley, California. Diverse creative approaches cover a broad spectrum of photography providing a glimpse of humanity at its best and worst, from the famous to the obscure, the sublime to the absurd.

Rene di Rosa began collecting works of art with his late wife Veronica in the 1960’s, focusing on contemporary Bay Area artists. The di Rosa Foundation has amassed an impressive collection of well over 1,000 works in a variety of media, with a recurring theme evident in their interest in figurative work and its contemporary expression.

For the second time the Schneider Museum exhibited a portion of their extensive collection. The Schneider selected 55 images from the di Rosa’s collection 216 photographs.

The scope of this exhibition included a few images from early in the 20th century – Andre Kertesz (1926), Walker Evans (1932), Ruth Bernard (1936, 1945, 1976), and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1954). Photographs began to change in subject matter and technique after World War II. Diane Arbus (1964), Imogen Cunningham (1960) are represented by images from this period although they both made a life time of photographs.

The next generation of photographers – Jerry Uelsmann (1975), Judy Dater (1974, 1977) – were a bridge between ‘straight’ photography, with its emphasis on documentary and formal photographic technique, and the increasingly experimental period which followed. These experiments reflected those happening in the art world at large, and the resulting images were created by increasingly manipulated negatives, chemicals, and equipment.

There were both famous and unknown photographers in this exhibition. There was humor and horror, the obvious and the elusive, the sublime and the absurd. The exhibition was a glimpse of humanity at its best and worst, sharply focused and powerfully illuminated by the immediacy and reality of the photographic image.

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