Shirley Jaffe. Une Américaine à Paris
Exhibition
From 17 October 2023 to 08 January 2024
An American painter who has lived in Paris since the 1950s, Shirley Jaffe (1923 - 2016) is a reference point for abstract painting at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Defiantly, she claimed to have discovered Pierre Bonnard in New York and Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol in Paris. This exhibition is her first retrospective. Following a chronological sequence, the exhibition presents her abstract expressionist beginnings, followed by the two radical breaks leading to the abandonment of gesturality at the end of the 1960s and the large canvases characteristic of maturity in their forms.
1960s and the large canvases characteristic of the mature period with their free, unified forms and the presence of incisive white. He also emphasises the parallel path followed with her "gouaches" on paper, which are quickly executed, in contrast to the paintings, which are as hectic as urban life, but always take a long time to complete. Shirley Jaffe kept a 'diary' of her paintings in progress. These precious studio notes and unpublished archives will be shown alongside the works.
Curator:
Frédéric Paul, curator, contemporary collections, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris