Shirley Jaffe · an American in Paris
Shirley Jaffe - Sans titre - 1963-64 - Sans titre - 1980
From April 20 to August 29, 2022, the Centre Pompidou in Paris presents "Shirley Jaffe - an American Woman in Paris," the first major retrospective of American artist Shirley Jaffe (1923-2016).
Source: Center Pompidou ·· Image: Shirley Jaffe, "Untitled," 1963-64. 152.2 x 122.4 cm, oil on canvas. Collection of the Centre Pompidou, gift 2020. Center Pompidou © Adagp, Paris, 2022 -- Shirley Jaffe, "Untitled," c.1980. 95 x 69 cm. Courtesy of Estate Shirley Jaffe and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Bruxelles © Adagp, Paris, 2022.
Born in New Jersey in 1923, Shirley Jaffe moved to Paris in 1949, where she came into contact with other American artists such as Joan Mitchell. During the decades that followed, Jaffe created a remarkable body of abstract artwork, which evolved from the gestural style of Abstract Expressionism to a more geometric late style.
In a press note, the Pompidou explains, “in the 1960s, she turned her back on her promising beginnings as an Abstract Expressionist. First in 1963-64, thanks to a Ford Foundation bursary that enabled her to move to Berlin, and again in 1969 with her second solo exhibition, in Jean Fournier’s gallery, when she created a sensation by eliminating all gesture”.
“In the 1970s began to develop her personal style with chiselled contours which, without allowing her to be associated with the then-declining Hard Edge wave, maintained her at an equal and respectful distance from her former American Expressionist peers and from European advocates of Concrete Art, like Gottfried Honegger, who admired her. Her geometry is orderly but skilfully contrasted, always warped, apparently random but scrupulously dictated by an implacable rigour. Jaffe was revolted at the sight of natural landscapes in her earlier paintings. From here on, her works had an urban inspiration, initially with chequered motifs and columns, then solid, methodically disjointed blocks isolated by an increasingly insinuating white cement. After discovering the demolition site of the old Montparnasse train station in 1967, the idea of chaos was a metaphor and a jubilant force for this patient and organised artist”.
After the Pompidou, the exhibition will be presented at the Kunstmuseum Basel (from March 25 to July 30, 2023) and at the Matisse Museum in Nice (from October 11 to January 8, 2024).

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