Jay DeFeo began this work as an “idea that had a center to it.” At first, the painting measured approximately 9 feet tall by 7 feet wide and was called Deathrose
, but after she had been working on it for about a year, DeFeo transferred the work onto a larger canvas with the help of friends. She continued to work on The Rose
for the next seven years, applying thick oil paint with palette knives and trowels, then scraping it away. Eventually the work became like both a painting and a sculpture
Although DeFeo chose not to explain exactly what this work was about, she did say that there was a connection to “the way actual rose petals are formed and how they relate to each other in the flower.” When DeFeo moved out of her studio in 1965, the painting (which she was then calling The White Rose) was too large to fit down the stairs. Movers had to break a hole in the wall and take it out the second-story window with a forklift! After being exhibited only twice, The Rose was transported to the San Francisco Art Institute, where it remained hidden from view, almost forgotten, behind a wall for twenty-one years. In 1995 it was restored by a team of conservators and brought to New York to be shown in an exhibition at the Whitney! The Rose is now in the Museum’s collection.