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 C
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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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Jay DeFeo
American painter (1929–1989)
Jay DeFeo (31 March 1929 – 11 November 1989) was an American visual artist who became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco.[1] Best known for her monumental work The Rose, DeFeo produced courageously experimental works throughout her career, exhibiting what art critic Kenneth Baker called “fearlessness.”[2]
Life and work
[edit]Early life
[edit]Jay DeFeo was born Mary Joan DeFeo on 31 March 1929, in hannover, New Hampshire, to a nurse from an Austrian immigrant family and an Italian-American medical student.[3]
In 1932, the DeFeo family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where her father graduated from Stanford University School of medicin and became a traveling doctor for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Between 1935 and 1938, DeFeo traveled around rural parts of Northern California with her parents, and also spent extensi