Bruce Wolfe March 29, 1941 – December 27, 2022
If you’ve ever been to my home or my airbnb in Tahoe you will see a whole series of this artist’s paintings, I own most of his entire Tahoe Music Festival art from the 80’s and 90’s. This locally revered and world renowned artist recently passed away but has left behind a beautiful legacy in his works of art.
Artist Bruce Wolfe studied art at San Jose State University and the Art Institute of San Francisco. Additionally, he studied with renowned artists Bettina Steinke and Bruno Lucchesi. Adept in both oils and clay, he taught figure painting and sculpture at several Northern California art schools. Bruce was a fellow in the National Sculpture Society and received an honorary Doctorate from the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
Bruce had just turned 20 years old when he was employed by one of the largest advertising agencies, Foote, Cone & Belding as an art director where he began to make a name for himself in the agency world, doing design, layout and television. In his downtime he painted and sculpted people portraits and was even commissioned to do the memorial bronze of Kurt Herbert Adler in the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.
At the age of 30 Bruce left the ad agency business to focus on his commercial illustration career, and did award-winning work for Levi’s, Gallo, Henry Weinhard, Mastercard and Budweiser Anhauser Busch. Other notable commissions included illustrating campaigns for San Miguel Beer, Kawasaki, Mendocino and Tahoe Music Festivals, U.S. Women’s Ski team, Sony Music, Stanford University, Lucas Films, Chevron, Dole, HP, Nestle’s, Ringling Bros Circus, Rolling Stone magazine, Sierra Club, Time-Life Books, U.S. Forest Service, Celestial Seasonings, NASA, Esquire, Kiss, and Pink Floyd to name a few.
In 1992 Bruce expanded his talents to sculpture and was commissioned to do a series of significant pieces for St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA. His sculpture work included a statue of Tony Bennett on the lawn of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, Frederick Douglass, Arnold Palmer, Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Barbara Jordan, Margaret Thatcher, Lamar Hunt, Chong-Moon Lee, and four figures at the Old Mission in Santa Barbara, including Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Ken Coit, his last work of art, was completed and installed in October at The University of Arizona.
