biography
Neil Jenney, born 1945 in Torrington, Connecticut, is an american contemporary painter and representative of the New Realism. Notorious for his bad paintings As an artist he is mostly self-taught, he attended the Massachusetts College of Art in 1964 and moved to New York later in 1966, where he has lived and worked ever since. Jenney himself describes his style as realistic, but in an idiosyncratic use of the word, meaning: a style in which stories find truth in a simple relationship of objects. His paintings tell little nasty or funny stories. Stories that take place in the mind of the viewer when he sees them and relates the persons or objects depicted to each other. Jenney sees his work that represent a naive and realistic style as a reaction against the Minimalism and Pop Art movement that had dominated the art world in the 1960s.
His works were shown at various institutions including The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington), The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles) and The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
Neil Jenney: Bad Paintings, Tobias Mueller Modern Art, Zurich
2018
Neil Jenney: American Realist. New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain
2017
Neil Jenney: Drawings & Paintings, Gagosian Gallery, New York
2014
Neil Jenney, Hall Art Foundation, Reading
2013
Works of the Jenney Archive, Gagosian Gallery, New York
2007
Neil Jenney: North America, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield
2001
Neil Jenney: The Bad Years 1967-70, Gagosian Gallery, New York
1994
Collection in Context – Neil Jenney: Natural Rationalism, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1981
Neil Jenney: Paintings and Sculpture 1967-1980, University of California Art Museum, Berkeley
Neil Jenney, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
Neil Jenney, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Neil Jenney, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek
Neil Jenney, Kunsthalle, Basel