News / Jay DeFeo / Museum Exhibitions

On View

The Whitney’s Collection
Selections from 1900 to 1965

Opened June 28, 2019
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org

This exhibition of more than 120 works, drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, is inspired by the founding history of the museum. The Whitney was established in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to champion the work of living American artists. A sculptor and a patron, Whitney recognized both the importance of contemporary American art and the need to support the artists who made it. The collection she assembled foregrounds how artists uniquely reveal the complexity and beauty of American life. Work by Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann is included.

Closed

Degree Zero
Drawing at Midcentury

October 31, 2020–June 5, 2021
Museum of Modern Art, New York
www.moma.org

Bringing together approximately eighty works on paper from the museum’s collection, Degree Zero illuminates how artists used drawing to forge a new visual language in the aftermath of World War II. Modest, immediate, and direct, drawing was the ideal medium for this period of renewal. The exhibition looks across movements, geographies, and generations to highlight connections between artists who shared common materials and ideas between 1948 and 1961. Work by Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, and Cy Twombly is included.

Closed

Artist’s Choice
Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape

October 21, 2019–April 12, 2020
Museum of Modern Art, New York
www.moma.org

In The Shape of Shape, Amy Sillman—an artist who has helped redefine contemporary painting, pushing the medium into drawing, installations, video, and zines—has created a revelatory Artist’s Choice installation drawn from the museum’s collection. The exhibition features works, many rarely seen, spanning vastly different time periods, places, and mediums. Work by Jay DeFeo, Helen Frankenthaler, Howard Hodgkin, Henry Moore, Albert Oehlen, and Christopher Wool is included.

Closed

Undersoul
Jay DeFeo

March 8–July 7, 2019
San José Museum of Art, San Jose, California
sjmusart.org

Undersoul: Jay DeFeo features unique photographs, photocollages, photocopies, drawings, and paintings from the 1970s and 1980s that track the artist’s visual vocabulary across mediums and subject matter. This focused exhibition highlights Jay DeFeo’s prolific use of photographic practices as an underexamined but critical facet of her transmutative process. Building upon four works in the San José Museum of Art’s permanent collection as guiding linchpins, the exhibition draws largely on previously unpublished and unexhibited works from the rich holdings of the Jay DeFeo Foundation.

Closed

Jay DeFeo
The Ripple Effect

June 29–October 28, 2018
Aspen Art Museum, Colorado
www.aspenartmuseum.org

This exhibition examines integral themes within the practice of Jay DeFeo, from her use of unconventional materials and blurring of abstraction and representation to her devotion to chance and experimentation. The title of the exhibition, The Ripple Effect, refers to DeFeo’s lasting influence on contemporary artists working today. Presenting a core selection of the artist’s work in drawing, painting, collage, and photography, the show examines her legacy through the work of eleven contemporary artists, all of whom were influenced by her delicate, deliberate approach and intimate vision. This exhibition has traveled from Le Consortium in Dijon, France. 

Closed

Jay DeFeo
The Ripple Effect

February 3–May 20, 2018
Le Consortium, Dijon, France
www.leconsortium.fr

This exhibition examines integral themes within the practice of Jay DeFeo, from her use of unconventional materials and blurring of abstraction and representation to her devotion to chance and experimentation. The title of the exhibition, The Ripple Effect, refers to DeFeo’s lasting influence on contemporary artists working today. Presenting a core selection of the artist’s work in drawing, painting, collage, and photography, the show examines her legacy through the work of eleven contemporary artists, all of whom were influenced by her delicate, deliberate approach and intimate vision.

Closed

Jay DeFeo
A Retrospective

November 3, 2012–June 9, 2013
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
www.sfmoma.org

This retrospective is the definitive exhibition to date of the work of Jay DeFeo. 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), which she spent eight years making, 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 is presented for the first time in this exhibition of more than 130 objects. The astonishing array of collages, drawings, paintings, photographs, small sculptures, and jewelry on view illuminate DeFeo’s courageous experimentation and extraordinary vision.

Closed

Jay DeFeo
A Retrospective

February 28–June 2, 2013
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org

This retrospective is the definitive exhibition to date of the work of Jay DeFeo. 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), which she spent eight years making, 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 is presented for the first time in this exhibition of more than 130 objects. The astonishing array of collages, drawings, paintings, photographs, small sculptures, and jewelry on view illuminate DeFeo’s courageous experimentation and extraordinary vision. This exhibition has traveled from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.