With a new Introduction by the Author This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and documents the work of West Coast artists from 1945 to the 1970s, with glances back to the art schools and movements of the first half of the century. Twenty-five years after its first publication it is still our most trenchant record of that period in American art history. Writing as an artist and critic who observed firsthand the vital and innovative postwar art scene in California, Plagens has provided an invaluable record of the artists and work created in Los Angeles and San Francisco and, more briefly, in Seattle and the northwest. With a new Introduction by the Author This book, full of rare illustrations, surveys and documents the work of West Coast artists from 1945 to the 1970s, with glances back to the art schools and movements of the first half of the century. Twenty-five years after its first publication it is still our most trenchant record of that period in American art history. Writing as an artist and critic who observed firsthand the vital and innovative postwar art scene in California, Plagens has provided an invaluable record of the artists and work created in Los Angeles and San Francisco and, more briefly, in Seattle and the northwest.