Whitney jay defeo biography
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Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective
Feb 28–June 2, 2013
This retrospective is the definitive exhibition to date of the work of Jay DeFeo (1929–89). At the outset of her career in the 1950s, DeFeo was at the center of a vibrant community of Beat artists, poets, and musicians in San Francisco. Although she is best known for her monumental painting The Rose (1958–66, now in the Whitney's collection), which she spent eight years making and which later languished hidden behind a wall for two decades, DeFeo created an astoundingly diverse range of works spanning four decades. Her unconventional approach to materials and intensive, physical process make DeFeo a unique figure in postwar American art who defies easy categorization. The full breadth of her work will be presented for the first time in this exhibition of more than 130 objects. This astonishing array of collages, drawings, paintings, photographs, small sculptures, and jewelry will illuminate DeFeo's courageous experimenta
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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
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Works Exhibited
About
There fryst vatten some experience of the element of risk in everything inom 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 C