KIM FROHSIN
(American, born 1961)
BAUR-SCHWIETZER MALTING COMPANY
Acrylic and Color Pencil on Paper mounted on Canvas
38¾ x 48¼ Inches
Signed Lower Center, 'S.K. Frohsin' and Dated 'August 1990'
Titled on painted reserve at lower center, 'Baur-Schweitzer Malting Co, Inc. 1990'
Displayed in a custom, carved wood and burnished, water-gilt frame.
Framed dimensions: 40.25 H x 1.75 D x 50 W inches
A lyrical, semi-abstract view of the original Malt house, one of the last remaining barrel-brewing malt houses in the US. The North Beach Malt House is an historical landmark building located at 445 Francisco Street in San Francisco, California. It originally served as a malting factory and brewery for 40 years and was nearly destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
The owner at the time, George W. Bauer, rebuilt the Malt House using concrete and steel girders. His company, Bauer & Schweitzer, continued to supply malt to Bay Area breweries, including the Anchor Brewing Company, into the 1970's. The site was developed into luxury condominiums in the mid-90s with the first units sold in 2001. The designers, MBH Architects, kept as much of the original structure as possible, including even the two-story grain silos. This allowed them to create a European-style residential property centered around a courtyard measuring 150 x 60 feet.
Kim Frohsin, often associated with the Bay Area Figurative movement, began exhibiting in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s and, in 1993, was included with Nathan Olivera, Manuel Neri and Stephen De Staebler in the ground-breaking exhibit "Four Figures from the Bay." In 1996, with Wayne Thiebaud serving as juror, Frohsin won the California Society of Printmakers' Award and, the following year, exhibited at the de Young Museum's Bay Area Art: The Morgan Flagg Collection."
Born in Atlanta, Frohsin emerged as one of the most distinctive voices of the post–Bay Area Figurative generation, blending the rigor of classical draftsmanship with a bold experimental sensibility with her education tracing an early balance between humanistic inquiry and aesthetic exploration. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities and French from San Diego State University, she continued her studies in Aix-en-Provence at the Institut pour les Étudiants Étrangers, where the French landscape and its historical associations with Cézanne and Matisse left a lasting impression. Returning to California, Frohsin completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, refining her technical fluency in drawing and painting while absorbing the Bay Area’s modernist legacy.
By the late 1980s, she had established herself as a force within San Francisco’s vital studio milieu, initially recognized for her figurative works that combined expressive line with a disciplined formal structure. In the early 1990s she was identified as part of the “third generation” of Bay Area Figurative painters—those artist who extended the principles of David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn into new psychological and material territories. Her participation in the 1993 exhibition 'Four Figures from the Bay', juried by Wayne Thiebaud, confirmed this connection and introduced her to a wider critical audience. Around this time she also began producing monotypes and mixed-media works, expanding her language beyond oil into acrylic, gouache, and collage.
Frohsin’s themes have remained grounded in the human figure and the poetics of everyday life, yet her stylistic evolution reveals an increasing freedom of invention. The mid-1990s brought her the California Society of Printmakers’ Award and a growing number of exhibitions in San Francisco and beyond, including representation with the Paul Thiebaud Gallery, where her work was shown alongside that of the senior Bay Area masters. Her studio practice, characterized by series such as Portraits of Numbers, Cautionary Tales, and The Dress, demonstrates an ongoing dialogue between sensual immediacy and formal abstraction—paintings that often verge on the tactile, layered with ink, paper, and pigment in dense chromatic harmonies.
During the twenty-first century, Frohsin’s paintings, assemblages and figurative abstractions have been acquired by significant institutional and private collections, including the San Jose Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, and the State of California’s public art holdings. Frohsin continues to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, maintaining her unwavering commitment to the expressive vitality of the human form and the improvisatory possibilities of mixed media- qualities that secure her position within the continuing lineage of California modernism.
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Solo Exhibitions:
Kim Frohsin: Selected Figures from the 1990s
March 15 - May 10, 2025
Andra Norris Gallery
Burlingame, CA 94010
Kim Frohsin: Tiny Dancers, 2007-2009
June 20 – July 20, 2024
Paul Thiebaud Gallery
San Francisco, CA 94133
Kim Frohsin: Figures With Edges
Nelson Macker Fine Art
June 5 - July 8, 2008
Kim Frohsin: Recent Figures
John Natsoulas Gallery
February 28 - March 24, 2007
Two Minutes and Counting: Kim Frohsin
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
February 1 - 24, 2007
In The Abstract: 2004-2005
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
July 7 - August 27, 2005
Kim Frohsin: Paintings & Prints
Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery
March 1 - 31, 2005
Grids & Motifs: New Works on Paper by Kim Frohsin
Cafe Borrone
(Courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery)
Provocative Poses: 2001-2003: Drawings & Paintings on Paper by Kim Frohsin
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
September 4 - 27, 2003
Wordworks II + Plus
John Natsoulas Gallery
January 8 - February 2, 2003
Medley
(Courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery)
January 6 - February 14, 2003
WORDWORKS: Kim Frohsin
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
December 6, 2001 - January 26, 2002
Kim Frohsin: Figures at Ease
May 2 - June 24, 2023
Andra Norris Gallery
Burlingame, CA 94010
Kim Frohsin: Figures at Ease
May 2 - June 24, 2023
Paul Thiebaud Gallery
San Francisco, CA 94133
Kim Frohsin — Figurative Monochromes, 2004-2017
March 18 – April 21, 2023
Andra Norris Gallery
Burlingame, CA 94010
A Self-Reflection: Selected Works from 1992-2018
October 6 - 30, 2021
b. sakata garo
Sacramento, CA 95811
Kim Frohsin - A Backward Glance
September 11 – October 31, 2020
Andra Norris Gallery
Burlingame, CA 94010
Portraits of Numbers: 2011-2012 and The White Dahlia Series: 2011
Paul Thiebaud Gallery
October 30 - December 22, 2012
Kim Frohsin: Cautionary Tales
Peninsula Museum of Art
January 28 - April 8, 2018
Reliquaries: Exposed
Gallerie CITI
July 5 - August 30, 2014
Wig Heads: Paintings on Paper and Monoprints by Kim Frohsin
Jackson Place Salon
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
March 1 - May 15, 2010
Wigs and Silhouettes: Kim Frohsin
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
May 7 - June 27, 2009
