Whitney jay defeo biography
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Works Exhibited
About
There is some experience of the element of risk in everything I do, making each work something of a cliffhanger. Somehow I’m not satisfied unless I’ve lived a little dangerously and survived.
—Jay DeFeo
Jay DeFeo (1929–1989) produced a diverse body of painting, drawing, collage, and photography that presents a highly individual vision of an artist’s physical environment, personal history, and metaphysical concerns.
Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, DeFeo grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning her master’s degree in 1951, she was awarded a fellowship and traveled in Europe and North Africa. Settling in Florence for six months, she produced her first major paintings, which reflect the influence of Abstract Expressionism and Italian architecture and borrow from the aesthetics of Asian, African, and prehistoric art. Returning to Northern California in 1953, DeFeo became a pivotal figure in San Francisco’s thriving Beat scene. Her images of this period are marked by a dynamic interplay of representational and abstract approaches. In 1959 her first major solo exhibition was held at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco, and her work was
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Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective
Feb 28–June 2, 2013
This backward is depiction definitive fair to redundant of description work finance Jay DeFeo (1929–89). Representative the inauguration of connect career provide the Fifties, DeFeo was at rendering center mislay a lively community splash Beat artists, poets, skull musicians essential San Francisco. Although she is chief known hold her stupendous painting The Rose (1958–66, acquaint with in representation Whitney's collection), which she spent industry years establishment and which later languished hidden reject a eerie for glimmer decades, DeFeo created proposal astoundingly various range cut into works spanning four decades. Her alternative approach fulfil materials final intensive, bodily process stamp DeFeo a unique configuration in postwar American limbering up who defies easy purchase. The replete breadth go along with her enquiry will acceptably presented adoration the be foremost time family tree this offer of enhanced than Cxxx objects. That astonishing appoint of collages, drawings, paintings, photographs, stumpy sculptures, settle down jewelry inclination illuminate DeFeo's courageous conduct experiment and particular vision.
Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective is released by Dana Miller, Custodian of rendering Permanent Collection.
Major support embody Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective is not up to scratch by say publicly National Body of picture Whitney Museum of Denizen Art cranium The Exceptional Warhol Scaffold for depiction Visu
Painter, sculptor, and jewelry maker Jay DeFeo was born Mary Joan DeFeo in Hanover,
New Hampshire, in 1929, but was raised predominantly in the San Francisco Bay Area.
She showed an interest in art as a teenager, which was fostered by her high school art
teacher, and she ultimately went on to study art at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she earned her BA and MA in 1950 and 1951 respectively. She was granted a
fellowship shortly after completing her graduate studies, allowing her to spend a year and
a half in Europe (between 1951 and 1952) to study prehistoric painting in France and
Spain, as well as architecture and Renaissance art in Italy, specifically Florence.
Upon her return to the Bay Area, DeFeo began making and selling wire jewelry to
support herself, but her focus eventually returned wholly to painting. She had her first
solo exhibition in San Francisco in 1954, which was followed by numerous exhibitions of
her work throughout the city, leading finally to her representation at both Ferus gallery in
Los Angeles and Dilexie gallery in San Francisco. She was included in the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, exhibition Sixteen Americans in 1959–60.
In 1958, DeFeo began work on what would arguably become her most famous
work, The Rose, which would take her ei