Maker/Artist
Jess
American painter, collagist, and sculptor, 1923-2004
Known for his distinctive paintings and layered collages that he called "paste-ups." His collages, typically large-scale, included fragments of magazine photographs, old engravings and illustrations, and jigsaw puzzle pieces. His paintings were both narrative and abstract. For his series entitled "Salvages," Jess painted over found canvases as well as his own, older paintings. In 1993 to 1994, there was a retrospective exhibition entitled "Jess: A Grand Collage" at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo; it travelled to New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. He was the companion of the poet Robert Duncan from 1951 until Duncan's death in 1988.
