Lost Art Salon

Lost Art Salon A SF gallery specializing in the rediscovery of important 20th artists who have been lost to time. O
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Our Signature Mix

Lost Art Salon’s founders and creative directors Rob Delamater and Gaetan Caron blend their distinct personalities to create the gallery’s curious and unmistakable air of an “art apothecary”. Intimately acquainted with each work of art in the gallery, Delamater and Caron have from the outset anchored the gallery’s mission to finding new audiences for artists who have been overlo

oked by the confines of art history. Through dedicated searches worldwide Lost Art Salon continues to rediscover new artists and collections, including:
• Philadelphia artist John Whitworth Robson who defied his family's wishes and took off in 1905 for the art capital of the world, Paris, and later on returned to Hollywood to become one of the key scene painters of "The Wizard of Oz".
• Alysanne McGaffey who landed at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1957, was just in time to become an integral part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.
• Dave Fox who fled Austria in 1939, would come to join a newly emerging art scene in Los Angeles.
• Polish-born Jennings Tofel who arrived in New York City at the turn of the Century and would soon be mentored by Alfred Stieglitz.
• Peter Witwer who created grand, stunning artworks in his Haight Ashbury apartment but would not be discovered until nearly forty years after his murder. Lost Art Salon serves our clients as an established resource for modernist, vintage, antique & contemporary art, embodying the atmospheres of an atelier, a fine art museum and a rare book library. We acquire our individual works and collections through artists’ estates, surviving family and friends, auctions, art dealers and myriad North American and European antique markets and fairs. Upon arrival at our gallery, our arts management team takes each piece through a diligent conservation and archival process detailing acquisition history and provenance. Prior to presentation in our gallery and online, our arts management team works from our selection of restored original period frames to classic contemporary frames to create the best stage for every piece. At Lost Art Salon, we are as inspired by the hunt and the rediscovery of historically significant artists and fine art collections, as we are with sharing these experiences and artworks with our clients. Visit us at our San Francisco gallery or online at www.lostartsalon.com

One of the small wonders in our upcoming show of WPA artists. This piece dates to 1931, shortly before Hall would join t...
06/02/2026

One of the small wonders in our upcoming show of WPA artists. This piece dates to 1931, shortly before Hall would join the WPA program.

Douglas Hall (1885–1958) was an American painter, sculptor, and graphic artist associated with the artistic currents of the early 20th century, including the Works Progress Administration era. Although much of his oeuvre remains unknown, Hall’s work is represented in the permanent collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, which holds his print Jack & Jinny. This connection underscores his enduring ties to Ann Arbor, the city of his birth and early development. Hall spent significant portions of his life in Michigan, including Ann Arbor and Grosse Ile (where he moved in 1911), before later relocating to Illinois. He died in 1958 at the age of 72 in Flossmoor, Illinois.

BAY AREA - It’s time to RSVP (thru our website homepage). If you know SF’s Coit Tower murals then you have a taste of th...
06/01/2026

BAY AREA - It’s time to RSVP (thru our website homepage). If you know SF’s Coit Tower murals then you have a taste of the drama and beauty of this era in art history. But there’s so much more to the story - including the abstract surrealism that came next for many of these artists.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States did something extraordinary: it put artists to work. This talk explores how artists captured the stories of everyday Americans, past and present, urban and country—and how their work helped shape a new vision and identity for the country.

Drawing from newly arrived historic Salon collections by Ray and Miriam Rice, Basil Hawkins, Ben Messick, and Eugene Zaikine, we’ll trace this pivotal moment in American art—and follow how many of these artists later turned toward the avant-garde language of abstraction and surrealism in the postwar years.

WPA Artists: Depression-Era Realism to Abstract Surrealism

Thursday, June 11th at 6pm (sharp)- 7pm. Always free.

Presented by Rob Delamater and the Lost Art Team.

Please RSVP for you and your guests.

We will also broadcast this live 6pm PST as an Instagram Live and save it to our feed the next day.

05/28/2026

We’re wrapping up our Vintage Portraits Event and hanging a preview of our incredible new WPA (1930s/40s) collection. Swing by this Saturday for a preview.

05/26/2026

We never just “pop” a piece into a frame. There’s a lot of consideration that goes into each pairing. For example…

1. Encounter by Miriam Rice
This batik textile is floated within a contemporary wood frame with a warm mahogany finish behind conservation clear glass. By floating the textile, the raw edges and handmade qualities of the batik remain fully visible, allowing the piece to breathe within the frame. The clean contemporary profile keeps the focus on the textile itself, while the warmth of the mahogany echoes the rich earth tones and reds within the work.

2. Basil Hawkins
This lithograph on paper is framed using a vintage inner wood frame with a dark mahogany finish, paired with a contemporary outer frame. Layering multiple frames creates added depth and presence, blending vintage character with a more contemporary structure. The varied textures and finishes complement the naturally tactile quality of the lithograph process itself.

3. Basil Hawkins
This charcoal drawing on paper is framed in an antique crossed-corner frame with carved leaf detailing and a painted gold metallic fillet behind conservation clear glass. The crossed-corner construction adds an architectural feel, while the leaf motifs introduce subtle folk art ornamentation without overwhelming the drawing.

We will be closed today, Saturday. Some unanticipated circumstances have arisen and we have had to make the decision to ...
05/23/2026

We will be closed today, Saturday. Some unanticipated circumstances have arisen and we have had to make the decision to be closed for the day. We will be open on Tuesday for our regular full week schedule and we look forward to welcoming you then.

05/23/2026

We’ve just added many of the pieces from our Vintage Portraits and Figures Event to our website. Here, Alex shares thoughts on one of his favorite artists in the collection.

05/21/2026

Basil G. Hawkins (1903-1980) moved from 1930s WPA realism into a more personal visual language, exemplified by these Abstract Surrealist paintings from the 1950s. He is one of the artists we’ll discuss in our June 11 ArtTalk on Depression-era WPA Realism and the Abstract Surrealism that emerged in its aftermath.

Hawkins was an American artist whose work is closely tied to the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s and 40s. As a WPA artist under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he belonged to a generation tasked with documenting and interpreting everyday American life during the Great Depression. His work is held in major institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the University of Michigan, and the Library of Congress. During his time he was considered one of the leading Michigan artists.

Address

245 S Van Ness Avenue, Ste 303
San Francisco, CA
94103

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 10am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 10am - 5:30pm
Thursday 10am - 5:30pm
Friday 10am - 5:30pm
Saturday 10am - 5:30pm

Telephone

+14158611530

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