Collection: Yvonne Jacquette

(1934 - 2023)

Yvonne Jacquette was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1934 and spent her youth in Stamford, Connecticut. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design from 1952-56. She lives and works in New York City and in Searsmont, Maine, and was married to the late filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt.

Yvonne Jacquette is an artist enamored with the aerial view. All works begin with direct studies made with pastel on paper from jet airplanes, city high-rises, or from rented single-engine planes. Critic Carter Ratcliff observes, “She offers segments of unbounded territories. At this stage, light looks like evidence of form’s fluidity.” In her nocturnes, point of view transforms the image (whether highway, nuclear plant, or city building) into patterns of luminosity.

Her landscapes have shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Nocturnal Visions in Contemporary Painting at Equitable Center; in the International Survey of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art; and in the traveling exhibition New Work on Paper, organized by the Museum of Modern Art. One can see Jacquette’s pastels, prints, and oil paintings in collections at the Staatliche Museum, Berlin; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D. C.; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

In the jetscapes, the recent addition of the wing helps the viewer to orient to the space and provides a provocative sense of brief interruption. “To Jacquette’s credit, she has never let her frequent-flier aesthetic become repetitive. This consummate artist continues to push her painting into hitherto unexplored airspace. I, for one, am enthralled,” states Carl Little, Art in America.