WORKS

Otis Oldfield’s works on paper are in the Achenbach Foundation of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Brooklyn Museum of New York and the W.L. Smith Memorial Gallery at Shasta State Historical Park. The Oakland Museum owns many works, including the entire set of W.P.A. lithographs on permanent loan from the M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum and his most famous painting “Figure”. The Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University owns an oil painting of the San Francisco waterfront. The National Museum of American Art and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. maintain lithographs from the Building the Bay Bridge series as well as entries for many of the W.P.A. mural projects in their permanent collections.

The Coit Tower Mural, Shipping Activities Inside the Golden Gate and the City Club of San Francisco Bar Windows (formerly Stock Exchange Club), Sporting Activities, can be seen during visiting hours regularly.

Biographical materials are available on microfilm at the Archives of American Art in Golden Gate Park. Of note also is the W.P.A. monograph: “California Art Research” (through 1937) and Yvonne Greer Thiel’s book: “Artists and People” (through 1959). Inkwell Publishing produced a 104 page halftone illustrated catalog (through 1990): “Otis Oldfield, Centennial Exhibit”

Otis Oldfield is featured in Ruth Westphal’s 1991 book “American Scene Painting – California 1930′s and 1940′s”.

The K.C.O.E.-TV Foundation used Oldfield’s Self Portrait – 1933 in a 1996 video: Impressions of California.

Recently Oldfield’s work has been included in the exhibitions “California Dreamin’ ” at the Fresno Museum, 1992; “Facing Eden” at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1995; “California Progressives” at the Orange County Museum of Art, 1996-97; “Picturing California’s Other Landscape” at the Haggin Museum in Stockton, 1999; and “Made in California”, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2000. Five works hung in the George Krevsky Gallery’s “California Regionalism” exhibit in 2002.

In 2004, Oldfield was included in “California Modernist Works on Paper” and in 2005, “The Figure in California Modernism” at the Spencer Jon Helfen Gallery in Beverly Hills. Oldfield’s portrait “Yun Gee” was purchased from the exhibit by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for its permanent collection.

Periodical Reference: Raymond Wilson, ‘Otis Oldfield, A Painter for His Times’, “Antiques and Fine Art 1990″.