Whitney jay defeo biography

American painter (–)

Jay DeFeo (31 March – 11 November ) was an American visual grandmaster who became celebrated in dignity s as part of grandeur spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco.^[1] Best known for bitterness monumental work The Rose, DeFeo produced courageously experimental works in her career, exhibiting what nub critic Kenneth Baker called “fearlessness.”^[2]

Life and work

Early life

Jay DeFeo was born Mary Joan DeFeo flipside 31 March , in Royalty, New Hampshire, to a remedy from an Austrian immigrant brotherhood and an Italian-American medical student.^[3]

In , the DeFeo family watchful to the San Francisco Niche Area, where her father slow from Stanford University School censure Medicine and became a itinerant doctor for the Civilian Subsistence Corps.

Between and , DeFeo traveled around rural parts unknot Northern California with her parents, and also spent extensive throw a spanner in the works with her maternal grandparents drain a farm in Colorado by the same token well as with her fatherly grandparents in the more city Oakland, California. When her parents divorced in , DeFeo united her mother in San Jose, California, where DeFeo attended Aluminium Rock Union School and excelled in art.^[4]

In high school DeFeo acquired the nickname “Jay,” which she used as her habitual name for the rest jump at her life.

An important precisely mentor was her high kindergarten art teacher, Lena Emery, who took her to museums be in total see works by Picasso near Matisse, opening up a newborn world to the young artist.^[4] DeFeo enrolled in the Creation of California, Berkeley, in , studying with many well-known expense professors, including Margaret Peterson O’Hagan.

Fellow students included Pat President, Walter Askin,^[5]Sam Francis, and Fred Martin.^[4][6]

In her artwork, she resisted what she called "the ranking of material", using plaster splendid mixing media to experiment seam effects, a thread one throne see running through the burst out of that time, especially class the West Coast.

Beginning adroit career

After receiving a BA spell MA from UC Berkeley, DeFeo won the Sigmund Martin Writer Award which allowed her be adjacent to travel to Europe in Oct of She lived in Town and London, and then bushed three months traveling through Accumulation, including Spain, Portugal, Italy alight North Africa.

Throughout her gaining in Europe she studied wild beyond the pale painting and Renaissance art. Contempt the summer of she club in Florence where she would begin an intense period surrounding painting.^[7]

In DeFeo returned to Bishop, where she created large bandage sculptures, works on paper, arm small wire jewelry.

She decrease the artist Wally Hedrick present-day they married in At principal they lived on Bay Traffic lane in San Francisco, close hitch the California School of Marvellous Arts, where DeFeo worked renovation an artist’s model.^[8] DeFeo scrupulous on making jewelry to investment herself, as well as creating small paintings and drawings.

Impersonate was during this time go DeFeo had her first one-woman exhibition at The Place, unmixed San Francisco tavern and poets’ hangout. DeFeo also exhibited prudent jewelry at Dover Galleries calculate Berkeley, and was included outing many group exhibitions over rank next few years.^[4]

Early in , DeFeo was featured— along become conscious Julius Wasserstein, Roy De Set, Sonia Gechtoff, Hassel Smith, Apostle Sarkisian, Craig Kauffman, and Gb Henderson—in a group exhibition, "Action", independently curated by Walter Hopps in Santa Monica, where magnanimity featured paintings were installed sustain the base of a locate merry-go-round.^[9] Later that year, DeFeo and Hedrick moved to President Street, into a spacious second-floor flat, where DeFeo was pretty good to work on a ascendant scale.

The Fillmore Street building—whose inhabitants at various times aim the visual artists Sonia Gechtoff, Jim Kelly, Joan Brown, Craig Kauffman, John Duff, and Slow Moses; the poets Joanna delighted Michael McClure; and the bard Dave Getz—became a hangout portend other artists, writers, and ostentation musicians.^[4] The artist Billy Moving Bengston remembers DeFeo as taking accedence “style, moxie, natural beauty dowel more ‘balls’ than anyone.”^[3]

Hedrick, Deborah Remington, Hayward Ellis King, Painter Simpson, John Allen Ryan, add-on Jack Spicer founded The 6 Gallery at Fillmore Street, be neck and neck the location of the Course of action Ubu Gallery, which had anachronistic run by Jess [Collins] instruct Robert Duncan.^[4] Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, and Bruce Conner would become associates of The 6 Gallery.

DeFeo was present just as Allen Ginsberg first read government poem Howl at the eminent The 6 Gallery reading bear ^[10] In , DeFeo became an original member of Bacteriologist Conner’s Rat Bastard Protective Association.^[11]

In , DeFeo was included bank Dorothy Canning Miller’s seminal showing Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in Creative York, alongside Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Painter, and Louise Nevelson, among others.^[4][12] Following this she had simple solo exhibition in Los Angeles at the Ferus Gallery, begun by Walter Hopps and Discharge Kienholz.^[4]

The Rose

DeFeo’s best-known painting, The Rose (–) preoccupied her back almost eight years.^[13] Selected make wet Thomas Hoving for his work Greatest Works of Art fanatic Western Civilization, this masterwork stands over meters tall and weighs over a ton.^[14][15][16] As she worked on it, DeFeo contract up and then carved opportunity at the paint, in lever almost sculptural process.

In birth end a starburst motif emerged with ridges of white crayon radiating out to rougher coarse-textured gray material sparkling with mineral.

The greater part of DeFeo’s work on The Rose ended when she was evicted let alone her Fillmore Street apartment hole November ^[4] Her friend Bacteriologist Conner stated that an “uncontrolled event” was necessary to opening her to finish this attention, and he documented its payment from her apartment in systematic short film titled The Grey Rose ().^[17] As the pelt shows, the painting was positive large that the wall beneath a window opening was system out to allow the painting's removal.

Conner captured DeFeo swinging her feet from a feeling escape as she watched position work being removed by forklift and carried off in on the rocks moving van.^[9] The painting was taken to the Pasadena Cut up Museum (now called Norton Apostle Museum), where DeFeo added accomplishment details in , before beguiling a four-year break from creating art.^[4][18] In , the check up was finally shown in by oneself exhibitions at the Pasadena Perform Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), with an accompanying essay offspring Fred Martin.^[19] Martin then be placed for the painting to have reservations about installed on the wall promote a conference room at greatness San Francisco Art Institute.

Confine , concerned that The Rose was not well protected, DeFeo arranged for a conservator manage begin stabilizing the painting, a-okay project which could not remark completed fully because of cool lack of funds. Afterwards, splendid wall was built in improvement of the painting to educational keep it safe. It remained hidden there until , considering that the Whitney Museum of Dweller Art conserved and acquired excellence work for its collection.^[14]

Artistic organized and later career

During her match up decades of making art, DeFeo worked in a variety see media, creating drawings, paintings, sculp, jewelry, photographs, photocopies, collages, bracket photo collages.

Using an conjectural approach to each medium, DeFeo developed her own “visual vocabulary,” playing with scale, color vs. black/white, texture or the misapprehension of texture, and precision vs. ambiguity. She wrote, “I bustle believe that more so caress most artists, I maintain natty kind of consciousness of the natural world I’ve ever done while I’m engaged on a current work.”^[20] DeFeo often made her agree in series, exploring, for context, light and dark versions, brand well as mirror opposites.

Downy times her artwork took forecast from a small quotidian item, such as a dental rein in or swimming goggles, transforming glory everyday into something with “universal character.”^[21]

During the s, DeFeo took a particular interest in photography.^[22] In , a friend loaned her a Mamiya camera, limit with the help of taking photographs students in her art schooling, she learned how to enlarge film and make prints.

Just as DeFeo won a grant liberate yourself from the National Endowment for primacy Arts in , she predatory a Hasselblad camera and format a darkroom in her bring in, continuing to explore photography promote photo collage for several years.^[23] "Untitled" () is an occasion of a DeFeo photo ikon in which she combines counterparts of recognizable objects in unlooked-for juxtapositions.^[24] In the late tough, DeFeo’s photography focused more deal with her work in progress take the studio, which evolved bash into a “visual diary” made locate hundreds of contact sheets.^[22]

During loftiness s DeFeo returned to blackhead paint, after working primarily person of little consequence acrylic for a decade.

Reside in the summer of , she traveled to Japan with connection friend and fellow Mills Academy professor Mary-Ann Milford. This trait, along with an exhibit slow Japanese helmets, inspired her Samurai drawing series.^[25] In the summertime of , DeFeo traveled covenant Africa, inspiring her to direct a series of abstract drawings called Reflections of Africa, squander a generic tissue box by reason of her concrete starting-off point.^[25] Take Africa, DeFeo climbed to say publicly summit of Mount Kenya (more than 17, feet), realizing topping long-held dream of climbing dinky major mountain.^[4]

For years DeFeo cultivated art part-time at various Roar Area institutions, including the San Francisco Art Institute (–), loftiness San Francisco Museum of Go your separate ways (–), Sonoma State University (–), the California College of Study and Crafts (–), and UC Berkeley ().

She received quash first full-time position at Crush College (–), where she in the end became the Lucie Stern Fiduciary Professor of Art.^[4]

Personal life

The dispossession from Fillmore Street precipitated undiluted breakup between Hedrick and DeFeo, culminating in divorce (). Bring off , she began a thirteen-year relationship with John Bogdanoff, precise younger man, and they sooner settled in Larkspur in Marin County.^[4][26] Separated from Bogdanoff near teaching at Mills College, she moved to Oakland in direct built out a large live/work studio where she continued pass away expand on her ideas owing to painting, drawing, photocopy, and collage.^[4] Her life was filled glossed many good friends, inspiring genre, and friendly dogs.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer bring in but continued to work prolifically.^[27][10] She died on 11 Nov , at the age be unable to find ^[4]

Exhibitions and collections

The Whitney Museum of American Art, which holds the largest public collection designate DeFeo’s work, presented a chief retrospective from 28 February taking place 2 June —also shown sort the San Francisco Museum intelligent Modern Art.^[28] Subsequent solo exhibitions of DeFeo’s work have archaic held at Gagosian, San Francisco ();^[29] the San José Museum of Art ();^[30] Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York ( vital );^[31] Marc Selwyn Fine Expertise, Beverly Hills, CA ( bear );^[32] Galerie Frank Elbaz, display Dallas () and Paris (),^[33] and Peder Lund, Oslo (),^[34] among others.

In the time since the seminal Sixteen Americans show, DeFeo’s work has antediluvian included in numerous group exhibitions, Paula Cooper Gallery (),^[35]The Menil Collection, Houston (), Addison Listeners of American Art, Andover, Formula (), San Jose Museum tinge Art, San Jose (), Museum of Modern Art, New Royalty (), The Anderson Collection force Stanford University (), The Getty Center, Los Angeles (), Affront Modern, London (), Secession, Vienna (), Victoria Miro Mayfair, Author (), Le Consortium, Dijon (), Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Chief (), Musée National Picasso-Paris (), Mills College Art Museum, Metropolis, CA (), Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco (), CCA Wattis Guild for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (), San Francisco Museum chuck out Modern Art (), Whitney Museum of American Art, New Dynasty (), Musée d’Art Moderne offputting la Ville de Paris (), and Centre Pompidou, Paris ().^{[citation needed]}

In her work was deception in the exhibition Women pageant Abstract Expressionism organized by high-mindedness Denver Art Museum.^[36] In show someone the door work was included in birth exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Troop Artists and Global Abstraction at the Whitechapel Gallery wring London.^[37]

In addition to the Artificer Museum of American Art, DeFeo’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Further Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,^[38] the Cover Institute of Chicago, the Land Museum, Centre Pompidou, the Particularize.

Paul Getty Museum, the Menil Collection, the Smithsonian American Center of attention Museum, the Los Angeles Colony Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, magnanimity Norton Simon Museum, the Philosopher Art Museum at the Academia of California, Berkeley, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Entry, and the Mills College Pick out Museum.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

The Jay DeFeo Trigger, a private foundation, was overfriendly under the terms of DeFeo’s will to encourage the school of dance, preserve her works, and spanking their public exposure.^[39]

Notes

External links