page_title: Rinaldo Cuneo
section_title: Art
hierarchical_section_title: Rinaldo Cuneo / Art
caption_attribution_description: English: Rinaldo Cuneo, Bay Area Hills, 1934, 108 x 54 inches
context_page_description: Rinaldo Cuneo, dubbed the Painter of San Francisco, was an American artist known for his landscape paintings and murals.
context_section_description: Perhaps best known for his oil paintings depicting landscapes of the San Francisco Bay Area and for his murals, Cuneo also painted cityscapes, marine scenes, and still lifes. His first exhibition, in 1913, was in San Francisco at the Helgesen Gallery, and his work was also shown at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition and in virtually every subsequent major Bay Area art exhibit until his death. A reviewer wrote that Cuneo's paintings "leave a mellow glow in one's heart. They portray not merely places, but mood and atmosphere."
  His early color palette reflected that of Tonalism, with earthy, dark, neutral hues. One of his teachers, Whistler, was a leading Tonalist. Cuneo later adopted the lighter pastel palette associated with the Impressionists. Still later in his career, he used a palette which "vibrated with low-keyed, intense colors and radiance." His painting style also evolved throughout his career, and he integrated innovations which he came across into his own style, including aspects of Tonalism, Impressionism, and Modernism.
  From 1916 to 1917 Cuneo worked for a tugboat service while living in San Anselmo, painting maritime scenes in his spare time. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts during the summer sessions of 1920, 1925, 1935, and 1936.
  For his many exceptional paintings of the Bay Area, Cuneo was known as The Painter of San Francisco. Arthur Millier of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Cuneo's landscapes "breathe the essential strength and poetry of his region." Another critic noted that "they are the very soul and essence of California materialized in line and color." In addition to his California landscapes, in 1928 he also painted scenes of the Arizona desert. Cuneo said that "a landscape should embrace volume, simplicity, unity, a good sense of color values, rhythm of line, and above all, light."
  In 1934 Cuneo received a commission from the Public Works of Art Project to paint two lunette murals of Bay Area Hills in the foyer of Coit Tower. A number of Cuneo's paintings were featured in the 1935 inaugural exhibition of the San Francisco Museum of Art. One of them, California Hills, was honored with the Museum's Purchase Prize award.
  After a brief illness, Cuneo died in San Francisco on December 27, 1939.
  Although he had been a popular artist with many well-received exhibits throughout his life, Cuneo had found himself unable to successfully market his paintings due to the economic conditions created by the Great Depression. This led to feelings that he had failed. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen wrote that the artist's wife found "more than one hundred hitherto unseen Cuneo paintings, hidden in his two studios – in corners, in trunks, under books (some even hanging turned to the wall by the artist)." Many of these paintings were subsequently displayed in solo exhibitions, in 1940 at the San Francisco Museum of Art, in 1949 at the de Young Museum, and in 1961 at San Francisco's Gallery of Fine Arts.
  A critic wrote in 1991 that Cuneo "was a Cezannesque purist worth remembering".
caption: Bay Area Hills, 1934,
  108 x 54 inches
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