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He was part of the Society of Six, a group in the 1920s led by
Selden Gile that espoused bright color (Fauvism), a sense of region,
Impressionist style, and rebellion against the prevalent Tonalism
and classical strictures of William Keith and Arthur Mathews. The
Six exhibited together at the Oakland Art Gallery. Later in his
career, he reverted to a Tonalist style.
From childhood, Logan wanted to be an artist, and he took his first
lessons from a Miss Clara Cuff. A family friend paid for the
lessons because Logan's father disapproved of his son's art
interests. However, young Logan was encouraged in artistic
expression by the many artists who came to paint in the Temescal
Lake area and also by the Bohemian atmosphere of writers he met
there including Jack London and Ambrose Bierce.
He enrolled in the Partington Art School in San Francisco, and after
the school was destroyed by the earthquake worked with Richard
Partington at the Piedmont Art Gallery. Supported financially by his
brothers and never by his father, he became the first student to
enroll in the post-earthquake San Francisco Institute of Art, where
from 1907 to 1913, he studied with Theodore Wores, John Stanton,
Christian Nahl, and Frank Van Sloun, and learned conservative,
atmospheric styles of painting. In 1914, he first had his work
exhibited, the occasion being the San Francisco Art Association's
1914 Annual Spring Exhibition.
In 1915, he secretly married Bertha Kipke, a young woman whose
family were a part of the camping group at Lake Temescal and whom he
had known for many years. He studied at the Chicago Art Institute
and then returned to California where he studied and then taught for
eight years at the California College of Arts and Crafts at
Oakland. He and his wife lived on Chabot Road and became neighbors
of Selden Gile, with whom he and others formed the Society of Six.
He was set apart from many of his peers by his combining of Bohemian
living and business success and this duality was reflected in his
painting garb, which was a three-piece suit covered by an artist's
smock. Of these seemingly disparate characteristics, it was said
that he was an amalgamation of his own artistic instincts and his
father's business-like respectability.
In the 1930s, he changed from a colorful palette to a more subdued
gray one and traveled for subject matter around California and into
neighboring Arizona and New Mexico including trips to Taos with
Selden Gile in 1931 and 1934. He was able to get through the
Depression easier than other members of The Six because of the
success of his commercial art business including covers for "Sunset"
magazine.
He also became active in the California School of watercolor
painters, who took a bold, direct approach to regional subject
matter.
He died in Orinda, California on March 22, 1977 and his work is in
many collections including the Frye Museum in Seattle and the
Oakland Museum.
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