Jay DeFeo was born in 1929 in Hanover, New Hampshire, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received a bachelor’s degree in 1950 and a master’s in 1951, both in studio art, from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation, she was awarded a fellowship and traveled to Europe and North Africa for a year and a half, settling in Florence for six months. DeFeo worked intensively on what became her first significant body of work, influenced by Abstract Expressionism, the geometry of Italian architecture, and her ongoing fascination with Asian, African, and prehistoric art.
Returning to Northern California in 1953, DeFeo became a pivotal figure in the historic San Francisco community of artists, poets, and jazz musicians at the time. The art she began making in the mid-1950s incorporated the dualities of representation and abstraction, organic rhythms and geometric form, refinement and expressionism. DeFeo worked with unorthodox materials to explore the broadest definitions of sculpture, drawing, collage, and painting.
Returning to Northern California in 1953, DeFeo became a pivotal figure in the historic San Francisco community of artists, poets, and jazz musicians at the time. The art she began making in the mid-1950s incorporated the dualities of representation and abstraction, organic rhythms and geometric form, refinement and expressionism. DeFeo worked with unorthodox materials to explore the broadest definitions of sculpture, drawing, collage, and painting.
In 1958 DeFeo began work on “an idea that had a center to it”1 and almost eight years later, in 1966, completed The Rose, a monumental work created with so much oil paint that she called it “a marriage between painting and sculpture.”2 To concentrate completely on The Rose, DeFeo essentially withdrew from the art world for much of the 1960s, turning down offers of new gallery affiliations and solo exhibitions. The Rose was first exhibited in 1969 at the Pasadena Art Museum.
DeFeo was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 1988 but continued to work prolifically until she was forced to vacate her Oakland studio in October 1989 because of damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake. She died on November 11, 1989, at the age of 60.