ROY DE FOREST
Painter, Sculptor, Teacher, 1930-2007

"I came into this existence and through defined act or chance became an artist."

Roy De Forest's art remains unique in any accounting of the field of contemporary art today - highly personal, autobiographical and an art of strong fantasy.
- Roy De Forest: Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Art/Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974-1975

Ferus began in the spring of 1957 with a group show, "Objects in the New Landscape Demanding of the Eye," which brought together the painters Hopps had admired in San Francisco - Jay DeFeo, Roy DeForest, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, Clyfford Still - with the lesser-known LA painters who would become Ferus' stable.
- Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965, Whitney Museum of American Art

Education and Teaching
Studied at Yakima Valley Jr. College, Washington, 1948-1950; California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1950-1952; San Francisco State College, B.A., 1953; M.A., 1958. Taught at Yakima Junior College, Washington, 1958-1960; Contra Costa Junior College, San Pablo, California, 1960-1961; San Francisco State, 1961-1962; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, 1964-1965; Faculty, University of California, Davis, 1965 to 2007.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1945-1975
East and West Gallery, San Francisco, 1955, 1958; Stone Court Gallery, Yakima, Washington, 1959-1960; Dilexi Galley, San Francisco, 1960, 1962-1963, 1966-1967; Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York; San Francisco Art Institute, 1969, 1972; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1971; Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Art; Fort Worth Art Center, Texas; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1974-1975.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1945-1975
72nd Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association (from 1961, The San Francisco Art Institute) at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1953; 73rd Annual, 1954; 76th -80th Annual, 1957-1961; Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil, III Beinal, 1955; Fifty California Artists, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962; Third-Fifth Winter Invitational, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1962-1964; The Art Bank of the San Francisco Art Association, 1962-1964; Funk, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, 1967; The West Coast Now, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, 1968; Extraordinary Realities, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1973.