1. Jay DeFeo 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.
26 Facts About Jay DeFeo
1. 2.
Jay DeFeo was born Mary Joan DeFeo on 31 March 1929, in Hanover, New Hampshire, to a nurse from an Austrian immigrant family and an Italian-American medical student.
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In 1932, the Jay DeFeo family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where her father graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and became a traveling doctor for the Civilian Conservation Corps.
4.
Between 1935 and 1938, Jay DeFeo traveled around rural parts of Northern California with her parents, and spent extensive time with her maternal grandparents on a farm in Colorado as well as with her paternal grandparents in the more urban Oakland, California.
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When her parents divorced in 1939, Jay DeFeo joined her mother in San Jose, California, where Jay DeFeo attended Alum Rock Union School and excelled in art.
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Jay DeFeo enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley, in 1946, studying with many well-known art professors, including Margaret Peterson O'Hagan.
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Jay DeFeo lived in Paris and London, and then spent three months traveling through Europe, including Spain, Portugal, Italy and North Africa.
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In 1953 Jay DeFeo returned to Berkeley, where she created large plaster sculptures, works on paper, and small wire jewelry.
9.
Jay DeFeo met the artist Wally Hedrick and they married in 1954.
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At first they lived on Bay Street in San Francisco, close to the California School of Fine Arts, where Jay DeFeo worked as an artist's model.
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Jay DeFeo focused on making jewelry to support herself, as well as creating small paintings and drawings.
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Jay DeFeo exhibited her jewelry at Dover Galleries in Berkeley, and was included in many group exhibitions over the next few years.
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Jay DeFeo was present when Allen Ginsberg first read his poem Howl at the famous The 6 Gallery reading in 1955.
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In 1959, Jay DeFeo became an original member of Bruce Conner's Rat Bastard Protective Association.
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In 1959, Jay DeFeo was included in Dorothy Canning Miller's seminal exhibition Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, alongside Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Louise Nevelson, among others.
16.
Jay DeFeo's best-known painting, The Rose preoccupied her for almost eight years.
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Conner captured Jay DeFeo dangling her feet from a fire escape as she watched the work being removed by forklift and carried off in a moving van.
18.
The painting was taken to the Pasadena Art Museum, where Jay DeFeo added finishing details in 1966, before taking a four-year break from creating art.
19.
In 1973, concerned that The Rose was not well protected, Jay DeFeo arranged for a conservator to begin stabilizing the painting, a project which could not be completed fully because of a lack of funds.
20.
When Jay DeFeo won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973, she bought a Hasselblad camera and built a darkroom in her home, continuing to explore photography and photo collage for several years.
21.
For years Jay DeFeo taught art part-time at various Bay Area institutions, including the San Francisco Art Institute, the San Francisco Museum of Art, Sonoma State University, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and UC Berkeley.
22.
Jay DeFeo received her first full-time position at Mills College, where she eventually became the Lucie Stern Trustee Professor of Art.
23.
The 1965 eviction from Fillmore Street precipitated a breakup between Hedrick and Jay DeFeo, culminating in divorce.
24.
Jay DeFeo's life was filled with many good friends, inspiring students, and friendly dogs.
25.
Jay DeFeo was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1988 but continued to work prolifically.
26.
Jay DeFeo died on 11 November 1989, at the age of 60.