Zane Bennett Contemporary Art is pleased to offer a remarkable lithograph by Roy De Forest (1930–2007), an artist whose imaginative compositions and unconventional approach to representation helped redefine the boundaries of American painting in the second half of the twentieth century.
Created in 1978 at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Untitled presents a fantastical landscape populated by strange creatures and an equally peculiar human figure. Against a vibrant background of green, pink, and yellow, a cowboy-like figure appears alongside a rabbit-like animal—their forms rendered through a network of gestural lines and brilliant colors. The resulting composition is both humorous and unsettling; De Forest invites us into a world that seems to operate according to its own peculiar logic.
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
De Forest's work emerged at the intersection of several artistic movements that developed during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those that challenged the prevailing seriousness of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. He is most frequently associated with Funk Art, a movement centered in Northern California whose artists, including Robert Arneson and William T. Wiley, embraced humor, irreverence, and unconventional materials. His work also shares affinities with the Chicago Imagists, including Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, as well as H. C. Westermann, an influential predecessor whose eccentric imagery, dark humor, and unconventional approach to representation helped shape the movement. Yet De Forest's imagery also recalls much older artistic traditions, particularly the fantastical creatures and densely populated worlds of Hieronymus Bosch, whose paintings similarly blur the boundaries between reality and imagination.
Despite these associations, De Forest developed a highly individual artistic philosophy rooted in his interest in expanding the possibilities of realism. In 1962, he organized an exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute devoted to reconsidering the relationship between paintings and objects. The exhibition included, in his words, "Objects that function as paintings and paintings that are primarily objects, painted objects and illusions of objects that are paintings and objects themselves." In an interview published in the Oakland Tribune, De Forest explained his thinking:
Painting has been traditionally a device for constructing an illusion of visual reality. Recently painting has become progressively less concerned with 'things' and more with subjective states of consciousness. So, perhaps the time has come to consider a new kind of realism that would stress the actuality of objects themselves.
De Forest's conception of realism was particularly unusual given his artistic education. Born in North Platte, Nebraska, in 1930, he grew up in Nebraska, Colorado, and eastern Washington before studying at Yakima Junior College. Following military service during the Korean War, he returned to San Francisco, where he studied at the California School of Fine Arts under artists including Elmer Bischoff, Edward Corbett, David Park, Hassel Smith, and Sonia Gechtoff. These artists were closely associated with the development of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, the West Coast counterpart to the New York School. Although De Forest absorbed elements of their expressive approach to painting, he ultimately developed an aesthetic that was almost the opposite of their artistic intentions. Rather than abandoning recognizable imagery in favor of abstraction, he created an entirely personal visual language in which the recognizable and the imaginary coexist.
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
By the early 1960s, De Forest had begun developing a distinctive cast of recurring characters, including dogs, horses, devils, ships, and eccentric human figures. These subjects became the inhabitants of an elaborate imaginary universe rendered through dense accumulations of line, brilliant color, and unusual spatial relationships. Although his work has sometimes been described as naïve or outsider art, such classifications overlook his extensive formal training and intellectual engagement with contemporary artistic developments. The term faux-naïf is perhaps more appropriate for acknowledging the deliberately unrefined appearance of his imagery while recognizing the sophistication of his artistic intentions.
De Forest himself was particularly drawn to the concept of "Nut Art," an irreverent artistic philosophy that he developed alongside artists including William T. Wiley. Rather than prescribe a particular style or aesthetic, Nut Art encouraged artists to pursue highly individual forms of expression, embracing eccentricity and personal mythology in opposition to the increasingly institutionalized conventions of the contemporary art world. For De Forest, this meant creating images that were not simply representations of the external world, but manifestations of an entirely imagined reality. His paintings and prints almost function as portals into other universes populated by creatures that are simultaneously familiar and strange.
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
This approach is particularly evident in Untitled (1978). The composition is divided between an atmospheric green upper register and a densely worked pink foreground, while dark, cloud-like forms punctuate the landscape. A figure on the left appears to hold a long, curved tool, while a wide-eyed, rabbit-like creature emerges from the surrounding tangle of lines. The image is deliberately ambiguous: its characters suggest the possibility of a narrative, yet their relationships remain unresolved. What initially appears playful gradually becomes mysterious, revealing the artist's ability to create imagery that is as unsettling as it is appealing.
By the time this lithograph was produced, De Forest had achieved considerable recognition. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1972, and his first major retrospective, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1974, traveled to several institutions across the United States. His work had become an important contribution to the development of postwar American art, demonstrating that figuration, humor, and personal imagination could offer a compelling alternative to the dominant artistic movements of the period.
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
The present lithograph is also distinguished by its unusual provenance. It is a bon à tirer (B.A.T.) proof, the approved impression used as the standard for printing the edition of twenty. Unlike the numbered impressions produced for distribution, the B.A.T. served as an essential reference for the printer, documenting the artist's approved appearance of the finished work. This impression comes directly from the private collection of the printer who collaborated with De Forest on this work at Tamarind Institute in 1978. It has remained in the printer's private collection for the past forty-eight years and remains in pristine condition. This is the first time it has ever been offered for sale. This history makes Untitled (1978) a particularly notable example of De Forest's printmaking—one which embodies the imaginative freedom that defined his career.
To inquire, please email info@zanebennettgallery.com or use the inquiry form available on the artwork page.
MORE DETAILS
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
ROY DE FOREST | (Detail) Untitled, 1978. Lithograph, 22 7/16 x 29 15/16 in (57 x 76 cm)
Photography by Marylene Mey © Estate of Roy De Forest
