Bob Branaman at Karma International LA

Karma International Los Angeles is pleased to announce the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Robert R. “Bob” Branaman.
Beat Generation poet, painter, and filmmaker Bob Branaman began his career shortly after moving to San Francisco in 1959, joining fellow Wichita, Kansas transplants Michael McClure, Bruce Conner, and Charles Plymell. Branaman and other San Francisco artists of the late 1950s and early 1960s aligned in an exceptional convergence of creative, avant-garde bohemians, poets, artists and writers liberated by new experiences in thought, sexuality, and cultural expression. At Auerhahn Press, founded by Dave Haselwood, Branaman met Alan Ginsberg, and created silkscreen cover illustrations for local poets including Philp Whalen, John Wieners and Philip Lamantia. Branaman also created band posters for the San Francisco Oracle, and for the band he played with, The Gladstones, who played on the same bill in 1966 with Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company. As a precursor to the underground Zap Comix movement of the late 1960s, Branaman created the comic “Robert Ronnie Branaman,” printed in 1963 by Charles Plymell, which was later destroyed in the thousands for its alleged obscenity. Branaman was deeply influenced by his studies in Tibetan meditation, spending time with the Dalai Lama and a month at Esalen in Big Sur with Batman Gallery founders Billy and Joan Jahrmarkt.