Beschreibung:

SHIRLEY JAFFE (1923-2016) 'Pile ou Face', 2013. Canvas. Title, signature and date on the reverse. Provenance and certificate: Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels, 2014 The American artist Shirley Jaffe (1923-2016) left the United States in 1949 to join a group of American and Canadian artists who settled in Paris in the late 1940s. These artists, driven by a fascination for Impressionism, developed a "European" second wave of abstract expressionism which was more balanced and calmer than the New York version. Jaffe was taken under the wing of friends like Jean-Paul-Riopelle and Sam Francis in whose studio she developed, from the early start, her own abstract pictorial language. Her very early work still illustrates the typical characteristics of abstract expressionism with unrestrained brushstrokes and a broad range of colours. After a study period in Berlin (1963-1964) her visual language transforms: she starts experimenting with geometric forms thereby completely abandoning her gestural brushwork of the late 1960s. Hence, her second exhibition in Paris at the gallery of Jean Fournier shows a series of geometric compositions of uniform coloured forms with well-defined contours, a complete antithesis of her earlier work. One can clearly see the inspiration by the architectural elements of the demolition and construction of Montparnasse station, the neighbourhood where she rented a studio from Louise Bourgeois The use of white would become very characteristic in her later works. By applying the white paint only after the coloured forms have been assembled on the canvas, Jaffe uses it structurally to cut up the forms, making the white fields function as positive as well as negative space. In her continuous strive to avoid any figurative connotation and resemblances, she creates a unique pictorial language of very diverse collage-like "hard-edged" biomorphic and sculptural shapes in flat uniform colours. In her most recent works, from the late 1990s and early 2000s onward, she sometimes abandons these smooth colour planes and handles areas with relative looseness and transparency, making brushstrokes visible. She continues to surprise by including spontaneous, uncontrolled elements to her compositions to create a new dynamic. For Jaffe, this continuous evolution is yet another manifestation of the "manyness" of her visual language. The present painting dates from 2013 and is a fine example of this unique artist's latest period. Dimensions: 73 x 60 cm (74 x 61.5 cm)