LOS ANGELES, CA.- parrasch heijnen will present Dan Concholar: L.A. Times, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of the artist’s work, featuring a select group of paintings and works on paper from 1969 - 1982.

Initially influenced by Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism, Dan Concholar (b. 1939, San Antonio, TX; d. 2017, Grass Valley, CA) worked in series, exploring abstract yet corporeal motifs through the mediums of acrylic, collage, ink, pastel, and graphite. Concholar, the son of a Texas cowboy, was born on a ranch in San Antonio, but spent his childhood in Phoenix, AZ before moving to Los Angeles in 1955. By the mid-1960s, Concholar was immersed in LA’s Brockman Gallery community and held shows there as well as with Ankrum Gallery and Gallery 32. Concholar was recently featured in Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love, SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA (September 2025 – March 2026).

Concholar’s Yellow Bus Series, included in this exhibition and which was first shown at Brockman Gallery in 1971, reflects on busing in the time of desegregation in American schools. Responding to specific incidents in 1970 such as the detonation of dynamite in a yard of school buses in Denver, CO and the political impact of busing in Pasadena, CA (in September of 1970, Pasadena became the first school district outside of the American South to mandate desegregation), Concholar observed, “I watch this as a Black person but understand not just as a Black man, because I consider myself very much concerned with this nation, its values, and its promise to all people. This is precisely why the yellow bus began to mean so much to me as an artist.”

As the Brockman Gallery press release for his 1971 show highlighted, “Mr. Concholar is using the bus as a vehicle of expression. He states, ‘Everything about the school bus began to take on a greater meaning, the hopefulness in a bright yellow, of some promise to be fulfilled moving towards some point in a bright yellow chariot. The preciseness in intent and ideal becomes ruptured and torn, rusted and decaying in the reality of us as humans. How often we set out with idealistic hope of achieving some goal only to become tarnished, near defeat and lose sight of what it was all about when we started.’”

Concholar’s oeuvre also explores relationships and desire, as represented throughout the artist’s Zebra Man Coming Series and much of his graphite work. In Untitled (Zebra Man Coming Series), 1972, and Untitled (Zebra Man Coming Series), 1970, both shown in Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at MoMA in New York in 2023, Concholar’s bold and unfaltering use of color leads abstraction swiftly to representation and back, investigating the shapes and nuances of a human body.

In 1969 Concholar joined the Black Arts Council (BAC) through which he helped bring about three major exhibitions in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, and Timothy Washington (1971), traveled to Santa Barbara Museum of Art that same year; Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists (1972), in which his work was included; and Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976), traveled to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (GA), the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (TX), and the Brooklyn Museum (NY).

Concholar also spent his time teaching art classes and presiding over activities held at the Watts Towers Art Center where he became close friends with John Outterbridge. Concholar’s work was included in the historic Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM)’s inaugural show in 1974, Synthesis: A combination of parts or elements into a complex whole. He moved to New York in 1980 at the encouragement of his good friend and colleague David Hammons where he continued to exhibit at JAM until it closed in 1986.

Concholar attended Phoenix Junior College (Phoenix, AZ), Pasadena City College (Pasadena, CA), Otis Art Institute (Los Angeles, CA). Additional museum exhibitions include Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2022– 2023); Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2011-2012), traveled to MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012-2013), and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Gallery 32 and Its Circle, Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA (2009); L.A. Object & David Hammons Body Prints, Tilton Gallery, New York, NY; Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, CA (2006-2007); Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (1972); Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY (1971); and Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (1971), and the First Arizona Annual, Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ) 1959, among many others.