Tony DeLap creates visual magic.  The meticulously finished surfaces of his canvases mesmerize the viewer with their perceptual effects: the subtly torqued edges and elegantly composed planes of color confound our sense of space and dimension.  At times, the canvases appear to float independent of the wall; at others, DeLap’s work complicates our reading of a two-dimensional surface - painting becomes sculpture and then transforms back again before our eyes.  A foundational figure variously associated with West Coast minimalism, Op Art, LA’s Cool School of Finish Fetish, and the Light and Space movement, DeLap’s career and work defies definition. 

Tony DeLap was born in 1927 in Oakland, California, attended the San Francisco Art Institute and the Claremont Graduate School, and moved to Southern California in 1965, where he taught at University of California, Irvine until 1991.  He had his first solo exhibition at Oakland Museum in 1960 and was included in seminal exhibitions such as: The Responsive Eye (1965) at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Primary Structures (1966) at the Jewish Museum, New York; and American Sculpture of the Sixties (1967) at the Los Angeles Museum of Art.  His work is represented in major museum collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Tate Gallery, Los Angeles Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center. Most recently, DeLap was the subject of retrospective exhibitions at The Orange County Museum of Art (2000) and the Oceanside Museum of Art (2014), a monograph by Radius Books (2014), and a film by Dale Schierholt entitled “Tony DeLap: A Unique Perspective,” which screens at San Francisco Art Institute on Thursday, February 5th, 2015.