The American artist Shirley Jaffe graduated from New York’s Cooper Union in 1945, but life soon took her to Paris. When she arrived, Parisian artists judged her to be a major abstract painter. Jaffe sublet Louise Bourgeois’s studio, which was in the same street as Joan Mitchell’s place. In the 1960s, however, a trip to Berlin made Jaffe realize that Abstract Expressionism had began to bore her. She pivoted toward geometry. “It changed when I went to Berlin,” Jaffe said. “I had a feeling my paintings were being read as landscapes which was not my intention. I had to clear out the woods.” Jaffe died in 2016, at age 92. Six years after her death, this exhibition presents her career chronologically. —Elena Clavarino
The Arts Intel Report
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
Shirley Jaffe: An American Woman in Paris
Shirley Jaffe, Untitled, c. 1980.
When
Apr 20 – Aug 29, 2022
Where
Etc
Photo: Bertrand Huet/Tutti Image/Courtesy of the Estate of Shirley Jaffe, Galerie Nathalie Obadia,Paris/Bruxelles © Adagp, Paris, 2022