Ongoing exhibition debuts Saturday, May 25, 2024

San Francisco, CA: The Cartoon Art Museum proudly presents I Left My Art in San Francisco, an ongoing exhibition of original artwork featuring comic treasures from the museum's permanent collection.

Highlights of this celebration include a tribute to legendary cartoonist and herstorian Trina Robbins (1938-2024), a longtime friend and supporter of the Cartoon Art Museum. Artwork from Robbins and other influential underground comix artists including Spain Rodriguez and R. Crumb will be on display courtesy of a recent donation of original artwork from Cartoon Art Museum founder Malcolm Whyte and his wife, Karen.

About the exhibition

Less than half a century after the fabled Gold Rush, San Francisco’s thriving economy and growing population established the City by the Bay as a vibrant artistic and literary hub, as a host of talented creators and publishers made their home in the Bay Area.  

Jimmy Swinnerton’s weekly comic California Bears (also known as The Little Bears and The Little Bears and Tykes), published by William Randolph Hearst in the San Francisco Examiner beginning in 1893, is considered by some historians to be the first newspaper comic strip. The Bay Area soon saw an influx of innovative cartoonists, including Bud Fisher, creator of the daily comic strip Mutt and Jeff, which launched in the San Francisco Bulletin and was one of the early breakout successes in the comic strip world.  

Decades later, young comics creators, drawn to the city by its reputation as the capital of American youth culture, established San Francisco as their home and launched the underground comix movement, with many setting up shop in the Haight-Ashbury district and adjacent neighborhoods. Not bound by the rules and restrictions of traditional publishing houses, these small-press and independent publications pushed the boundaries of comic books to their limits and beyond, establishing cartoonists such as R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, and Trina Robbins as counterculture icons.  

Today, some of the biggest names in alternative and small-press comics hail from the Bay Area, and a host of illustrators, animators, and digital artists call Northern California home, whether drawing graphic novels for independent publishers like Last Gasp in San Francisco, creating theatrical features for the Emeryville-based studio Pixar, or drawing webcomics from their home studios. Rising costs of living in San Francisco have caused many local artists to seek out new living quarters in the East Bay and other BART-accessible environs, but San Francisco remains a vibrant, thriving scene for cartoonists and cartoon art.

San Francisco has made an indelible impression on visiting artists, as well, and the city has served a backdrop for comics as diverse as Bil Keane’s Family Circus and Eldon Dedini’s cartoons for Playboy magazine. Whether these artists were lifelong residents or occasional visitors, the City by the Bay sparked their imaginations, and made them leave their hearts–and their art–in San Francisco.

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