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Shirley Jaffe (artist)

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Shirley Jaffe
Born(1923-10-02)October 2, 1923
New Jersey, U.S.
DiedSeptember 29, 2016(2016-09-29) (aged 92)
France
Known forabstract painter and sculptor

Shirley Jaffe (October 2, 1923 – September 29, 2016) was an American abstract painter and sculptor. She spent most of her life living and working in France.[1]

Early life

Jaffe was born in New Jersey, USA, in 1923[2] and studied fine art at Cooper Union in New York City. She lived in Washington D.C. for a period of time, then moved to Paris with her husband in 1949.[3][4] Jaffe became part of a circle of ex-pat American artists which included Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly and Joan Mitchell.[5] Francis introduced Jaffe to his dealer, Jean Fournier, who became interested in Jaffe's work and began showing her art in his gallery.[5]

Career

Style

Jaffe began as an abstract expressionist, using gesture in her painting, but her style later changed to flat, uninflected surfaces and single-colour shapes.[3] In 1968, a grant from the Ford Foundation funded her to spend a year in Berlin.[4] This study break took her away from the circle of artist friends she had developed in Paris and may have reunited her thinking with the European abstraction of Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Wassily Kandinsky and Herbin. "It changed when I went to Berlin," Jaffe said later. "I had a feeling that my paintings were being read as landscapes, which was not my intention. I felt I had to clear out the woods."[6]

On her return to Paris, both her dealer Fournier and her artist friends were "shocked" at the change in her style; however, Fournier continued to exhibit her work in his gallery.[5]

Though she works on small gouaches as preparations, when she paints in oil Jaffe inscribes her forms very large, on canvases that are more often than not, larger than a person. At this scale a longish shape may seem more like the traces of the trajectory of her drawing arm, as in an Abstract Expressionist painting. Yet, as if she were painting a geometrical abstraction, Jaffe eschews bleeding edges or almost any changes in density or atmosphere. With hard, clear edges, and flat grounds, she depends on the presence and location of discrete shapes whose structures themselves must yield up movement.

— Rosenthal, 2000.

Exhibitions

Jaffe had at least 25 exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including at the Holly Solomon Gallery and at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery[7] and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA).[1] In Paris she exhibited at the Galerie Fournier and the Centre Georges Pompidou and later began to show her work at the Nathalie Obadia Gallery. Her work was also exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[1]

Her work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[8]

In 2000, the state government and the City of Perpignan commissioned Jaffe to design the stained glass windows of the city's chapel.[1] The installation of the completed windows coincided with a retrospective of Jaffe's work at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Céret.

Personal life and death

Jaffe died at Louveciennes, France on September 29, 2016 at the age of 93.[1][3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "US painter Shirley Jaffe, 93, dies in Paris | News | Expatica France". Expatica.com. Retrieved 2016-09-30.
  2. ^ Jaffe, Shirley. "United States Public Records, 1970-2009". FamilySearch. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  3. ^ a b c Grimes, William (2016-09-30). "Shirley Jaffe, Geometric Artist of Joyful Forms, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  4. ^ a b "BOMB Magazine — Shirley Jaffe by Shirley Kaneda". bombmagazine.org. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  5. ^ a b "SHIRLEY JAFFE WITH RAPHAEL RUBINSTEIN". www.brooklynrail.org. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  6. ^ Rubinstein, Raphael (2010). "Shirley Jaffe with Raphael Rubinstein". The Brooklyn Rail.
  7. ^ Roberta Smith, NY Times review, 2009
  8. ^ Magazine, Wallpaper* (2016-03-30). "How nonagenarian painter Shirley Jaffe stays cutting edge | Art | Wallpaper* Magazine". Retrieved 2016-10-01.

Further reading

  • Border Crossing: Shirley Jaffe-painting and stained glass, Deborah Rosenthal, Modern Painters, Spring 2000.
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