Louis Bassi Siegriest (1899 - 1989)

Louis Siegriest was a major California painter, famously known as a member of the Society of Six, a group of Bay Area plein-air painters who left the somber palette of their contemporaries to paint with vibrant color and vigorous style, an avant-garde movement at the time. Siegriest studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts and California School of Fine Art in San Francisco. He taught at the San Francisco Art Students League from 1848 to 1951.

Siegriest grew up coming to Bolinas where his family owned the big house across from the Bolinas Community Center, 19 Wharf Road, from the 1890s until he sold it in the 1950s. In the early days the family traveled from Oakland by a series of conveyance: ferry, train, wagon, foot and boat across the lagoon. Lauralee and Suzanne Westaway, who have given three Siegriest paintings to Bolinas Museum, also grew up coming to Bolinas and were close friends of the Siegriest family.