About Shirley Jaffe
Shirley Jaffe (1923–2016) was an abstract artist whose work evolved within the postwar Paris art scene. Born in the United States, she spent most of her life in France. After beginning her career in abstract expressionism, she developed a highly distinctive visual language of her own.
Biography
1923
Shirley Jaffe is born as Shirley Sternstein on October 2, 1923, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She is the eldest of three children. Her mother, Ann Sternstein, née Levine, emigrates from Russia at the age of two. Her father, Benjamin Sternstein, emigrates from Austria Hungary at nineteen. The family’s early history is shaped by the experience of migration and by the effort to get established within the American society.
​
1929
In October 1929, the Wall Street Crash plunges the United States and much of the world into the Great Depression. This historical rupture coincides with Jaffe’s early childhood and forms part of the unstable social and economic environment in which she grows up.
​
1933
When Shirley Jaffe is ten years old, her father dies. At the time, he owns a shirt factory. The poorly managed sale of the enterprise leaves the family in a vulnerable financial position. Jerome, the youngest child, is only one year old. The family relocates to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. In this modest domestic setting, Jaffe begins to draw and paint. She later describes this activity as a way to secure moments of solitude and focus within a crowded household.
​
Judaism forms part of Shirley Jaffe’s familial and cultural horizon. However, she consistently describes religion as neither imposed nor particularly central to her upbringing. Practice and ritual play an ancillary role during her childhood. Later, she states that she never felt especially Jewish, even though she acknowledges being identified as such in certain contexts. Her brother Jerome, by contrast, experiences their Jewish background differently and perceives it as more constraining. He later attributes this divergence not to differences in belief but to gender, suggesting that expectations and pressures associated with religious identity weigh more heavily on him than on his sister.
​
1945
Shirley graduates from Cooper Union School of Art. She later describes the retrospectives of Pierre Bonnard at the Museum of Modern Art (1948) and the Kandinsky retrospective at the Museum of Non-Objective Art (now Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) in 1946 as influential during these early years.
​
1949
Shirley marries journalist Irving Jaffe, whom she follows to Washington, D.C.
In Washington, she studies for a short period of time at the Phillips Art School. In October 1949, the Jaffes move to Paris. Irving Jaffe studies at the Sorbonne with the so called G.I. Bill. Postwar Paris, although no longer the unquestioned center of the international art world, remains a vital site of artistic exchange. It is particularly popular among young American artists. Jaffe becomes part of a community that includes Jules Olitski, Al Held, Sam Francis, Kimber Smith, James Bishop, George Sugarman, Jean Paul Riopelle, and Joan Mitchell. The reversal of her parents’ migratory path and the personal cost of leaving her family behind in Brooklyn marks her arrival in Paris.
​​
1952
Jaffe returns to New York for several months. With her, two paintings by close friends Sam Francis and Jean Paul Riopelle are traveling. She takes on a job at Macy's while soaking in the contemporary Art Scene.
1956
Jaffe holds her first Solo exhibition at Galerie du Haut Pavé in Paris. The exhibition presents paintings that belong to her early abstract phase, still marked by gestural and painterly approaches characteristic of the period, and preceding the radical structural turn that will emerge in her work in the late 1960s.
​
1958
Shirley Jaffe participates in an exhibition at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris in 1958, alongside Sam Francis and Kimber Smith. Unlike her 1956 solo exhibition, this presentation situates Jaffe within a group of already visible American painters, rather than as an isolated emerging figure. Sam Francis, in particular, is already well established internationally by this point. Jaffe’s inclusion indicates that her work is perceived as part of a coherent and relevant strand of postwar abstraction circulating between Paris, Switzerland, and the United States.
​
1961
She presents her first solo exhibition at Galerie Handschin in Basel. In the same year, François Mathey organizes the exhibition of Henri Matisse’s paper cutouts at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. Jaffe later identifies this exhibition as having a profound impact on her understanding of form, color, and spatial organization.
​
1962
Jaffe signs an exclusive contract for Europe with Galerie Handschin in Basel. Around this time, she and Irving Jaffe divorce. She retains her married name, under which her artistic identity and professional recognition continue to develop.
​
1963–1964
Jaffe receives a grant from the Ford Foundation and resides in Berlin. The city, still deeply marked by the aftermath of the Second World War and by political division, offers a radically different environment from Paris. During her stay, she encounters artists such as Frédéric Benrath and Emilio Vedova, as well as composers including Elliott Carter, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. This period contributes decisively to a reorientation of her artistic practice.
​
1964
Her paintings are included in the exhibition La Peau de l’Ours at the Kunsthalle Basel. The works are acquired at the initiative of Swiss art historian and curator Arnold Rüdlinger by an association of Basel collectors. Rüdlinger plays a key role in introducing Jaffe’s work into both private and institutional Swiss collections. The acquisition of her work through Arnold Rüdlinger places Jaffe within a serious European collecting and curatorial framework and confirms her relevance beyond the Paris gallery circuit.
​
1966
Jaffe holds her first solo exhibition with Galerie Jean Fournier in Paris, at 22 rue du Bac. This exhibition inaugurates a collaboration that continues until 1997 and encompasses nine solo exhibitions, establishing Fournier as her principal gallery in France.​
​
1967
Jaffe’s mother dies. In the same year, Arnold Rüdlinger also passes away at the age of forty eight. Jaffe later describes these two losses as the disappearance of the “pillars” of her world, underscoring the emotional gravity of this moment in her life.
​
1968
Jaffe completes Boulevard Montparnasse, a major painting that signals a decisive shift away from gestural abstraction. The work embodies a new approach to structure and spatial organization. It gets acquired a year later by the Fonds national d’art contemporain.
The same year, student protests dominate the public atmosphere. Jaffe takes a series of photographs of the demolished ruins of the Montparnasse train station before its modernization.
​
1969
Jaffe moves into her studio and apartment at 8 rue Saint Victor in the Latin Quarter of Paris, where she lives and works until her death. In the same year, Boulevard Montparnasse enters the Fonds national d’art contemporain, becoming her first work to be acquired by a French public collection. Her second solo exhibition at Galerie Jean Fournier reveals the full extent of her departure from abstract expressionist gestural painting. This show is widely understood as the moment when Jaffe’s decisive stylistic break becomes fully visible. The move away from gestural abstraction toward a sharply structured pictorial language positions her work as singular within postwar abstraction.
​
1973
Jaffe travels extensively across the United States, from New York to California, renewing her contact with the American art scene and its institutions.
1975
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art receives an untitled painting by Jaffe from 1970 as a donation from Sam Francis. In the same year, the Musée de Grenoble acquires its first painting by her, marking the beginning of its holdings of her work.
1985
The Musée national d’art moderne begins acquiring works by Shirley Jaffe. This marks the start of sustained institutional recognition of her work in France.
1989
Jaffe exhibits in the New York Artists Space. Forty years after leaving the States, it is her first solo exhibition there. A year later, she is holding her first solo exhibition with New York Gallerist Holly Solomon.
​
1996
The Centre Pompidou acquires the large diptych All Together, painted the previous year. The acquisition reflects increasing institutional confidence in the significance of her work.
2002
New York gallery Tibor de Nagy holds its first solo exhibition of Jaffe's work.
​
2008
The Centre Pompidou commissions a photographic documentation of Jaffe’s studio at rue Saint Victor. The photographs record the austere and functional character of the space in which she works and lives.
2016
On August 3, during a studio visit by Frédéric Paul, curator for contemporary art, and Bernard Blistène, then director of the Musée national d’art moderne, Jaffe is offered a solo exhibition at the museum.Shirley Jaffe dies on September 29, 2016, in Louveciennes. Shortly before her death, she approves the selection of works intended for a major donation to the Centre Pompidou.
​
2020
Twelve paintings created between 1952 and 1968 enter the collections of the Centre Pompidou as a donation, making it the biggest public collection of works by the artist.
2021–2023
Kunstmuseum Basel, Musée Matisse in Nice, and Centre Pompidou collaborate on a major travelling retrospective. The exhibition affirms Shirley Jaffe’s position as a key figure in postwar abstraction and as an artist whose work unfolds between American and European artistic contexts.
​
2025
Nearly ten years after her death, the Shirley Jaffe Foundation is founded by the descendants of the artist.