Shirley Jaffe

Shirley Jaffe left an indelible mark on the world of art with her vibrant geometric abstractions. 

Biography of Shirley Jaffe

Shirley Jaffe was born in 1923 in New Jersey, US. Her father passed away when Jaffe was 10 years old. Following his death, her mother relocated the family to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where Jaffe attended Abraham Lincoln High School. She went on to study fine art at Cooper Union in New York City, earning a certificate in 1945.

After completing her studies, Jaffe initially worked in the print department of the New York Public Library and later at Macy's, where she drew fashion sketches for the advertising department.

Following her marriage, she lived in Washington, D.C., for a time, attending the Phillips Art School. In 1949, she moved to Paris when her husband was transferred there. In Paris, she joined a circle of expatriate American artists, including Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, and Joan Mitchell. 

In 1963, a grant from the Ford Foundation enabled her to spend a year in Berlin. This period of study took her away from the circle of artist friends she had cultivated in Paris and exposed her to new influences.

Although Jaffe started exhibiting in solo shows in France in the early 1960s, her first solo exhibition was held in Bern, Switzerland, in 1962. It wasn't until the 1990s that American galleries began to showcase her work.

Shirley Jaffe passed away in Louveciennes, France, in 2016, just three days shy of her 93rd birthday.

Shirley Jaffe's Art Style

Shirley Jaffe's vibrant geometric abstractions are rich with associations inspired by Paris. Her meticulous compositions evoke the flat yet fluid figure-ground relationships and simplified forms reminiscent of Henri Matisse. With their flat geometric shapes, lines, and amorphous forms, her paintings also draw comparisons to Fernand Léger's circuses and Piet Mondrian's Neoplasticism. Before the late 1960s, Jaffe painted in a gestural style but eventually abandoned it.