Wally Hedrick (b. 1928 Pasadena, CA—d. 2003 Bodega Bay, CA) was a pivotal figure of the San Francisco Beat Generation. In 1954, he co-founded the legendary Six Gallery in San Francisco. Hedrick conceived and organized an important poetry event at the gallery, held on October 7, 1955, in which Allen Ginsberg publicly read “Howl” for the very first time, heralding the San Francisco Renaissance and West Coast literary revolution. In 1959, Hedrick and his wife, Jay DeFeo, were included in Sixteen Americans at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, alongside Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella.

In his own art practice, Hedrick rejected the formalism dominating midcentury discourse in favor of personal, social, and political art activism. His paintings hold intense, intricate imagery, with references drawn from art history, popular media, and intimate relationships. Hedrick was the first American artist to protest the Vietnam War and spent decades sacrificing his work as a statement of antiwar sentiment. In the 1950s he began painting over existing pieces in black, thereby withdrawing his contribution to culture, while simultaneously creating monuments of mourning. Hedrick’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; among others.