California painter and educator Frank Lobdell (1921-1913) was a key figure among first-generation Bay Area Abstract Expressionist artists. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco curator and Lobdell scholar Timothy Anglin Burgard, interviewed Lobdell in 2002.
Lobdell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Minnesota where he attended the St. Paul School of Fine Arts. He served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II from 1942–46 and subsequently attended the California School of Fine Arts on the G.I. Bill where he studied with Clyfford Still. He continued his education in Paris from 1950-1951 before returning to California where he taught at the California School of Fine Arts (1957-1964) and Stanford University from 1966-1991.
Lobdell exhibited his work widely in the United States and Europe from the 1950s on. He received many awards and honors including the Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Painting from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1988) and election to the National Academy of Design in 1998.
Lobdell died in Palo Alto in 2013 at the age of 92.