An exhibition of paintings by Jay DeFeo will open at Paula Cooper Gallery in October 2025. Dating from 1982–1989, the paintings mark DeFeo’s triumphant return to oil sixteen years after the completion of her masterpiece, The Rose, in 1966. Across large, abstract works and intimately scaled canvases DeFeo reveled in the rediscovered tactility of the medium, producing sensuous paintings with increased fluidity of form and line.

This will be the first exhibition in New York to focus solely on DeFeo’s painting, and the most significant gathering of DeFeo’s work in oil since her retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2012–2013. An illustrated catalogue with a newly commissioned essay will accompany the exhibition.