Transcending Definition

I’ve always got to get down there and show what is underneath everything.
—Jay DeFeo

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings, photographs, and works on paper from the 1970s by Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), organized in association with the Jay DeFeo Foundation.

DeFeo produced a diverse body of innovative work that continues to inspire artists today. The fusion of painting and sculpture found in her masterpiece The Rose (1958–66) has led to international acclaim. First exhibited in 1969, this gigantic impasto canvas spent decades behind a false wall awaiting conservation before being acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1995. The present exhibition focuses on the artist’s output in the decade following the completion of that pivotal work, when she was based in Larkspur, Marin County.

In 1951, DeFeo traveled in Europe and North Africa before returning to California, where she became an active participant in San Francisco’s thriving Beat scene. After largely withdrawing from the art world during the eight years she spent working on The Rose, she then took a three-year creative hiatus. During the two decades that followed, she made a significant number of paintings, drawings, collages, and photographs that trace a route beyond the formalist approach of many of her contemporaries and toward a more fluid, dynamic creative vision.