Elmer Bischoff

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Elmer Nelson Bischoff (1916–March 2, 1991) was a visual artist in the San Fransciso Bay Area. Bischoff, along with Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, was part of the post-World War II generation of artists who started as abstract painters and found their way back to figurative art.

While distinct from expressionist art that came from Europe, art of the Bay Area Figurative School displays the immediacy and warmth that one sees in expressionist painting. Elmer Bischoff was older than Park or Diebenkorn; prior to attending the San Francisco Art Institute, he served as a lieutenant colonel in intelligence services in England. Many other students then had the opportunity to attend school on the G.I. Bill after the war, and had had experiences in the world that may have led to their taking an independent turn in painting. Bischoff's quiet and lyrical paintings were serious in a different way than the painting which was being taken seriously at the time, which saw the rise of Abstract impressionism.

A retrospective of Elmer Bischoff's work, Grand Lyricist: The Art of Elmer Bischoff, was offered by the Oakland Museum of California, November 3, 2001- January 13, 2002.

Elmer was the father of composer John Bischoff.