We were deeply saddend by the sudden death of Roy De Forest on May 18th, 2007.
Roy De Forest was one of the preeminent artists of the California Bay area. Usually associated with the “Funk” art movement, De Forest, with appealing irreverence, mades paintings, drawings and sculpture of a wild world of weird humans and amazing beady-eyed dogs. “For me, one of the most beautiful things about art is that it is one of the last strongholds of magic. It is one of the few areas of human activity in which it is possible to do something for which you would be otherwise locked up or incarcerated, especially if you were a politician and did what you can do in a painting.”
De Forest made three prints at Shark’s; his first a woodcut, “Van Gogh in the Tropics” in 1999, “Ode to Rin Tin Tin” in 2002 and Dogman and Indian, a lithograph with hand painting in an elaborate frame made and painted by the artist.
De Forest was an influential teacher at the University of California/Davis and has exhibited his work worldwide, in numerous solo and group shows. His work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and many others.
To view or download a complete biography, please click here
