The Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion has organized a long-overdue posthumous retrospective for Los Angeles artist Jim DeFrance. Grouped largely by artistic series, the exhibition encompasses nearly six decades of his career. Seen altogether, this surprisingly comprehensive tome creates a moving, powerful narrative for an under recognized master painter who continued to make work up until his death from cancer in 2014.

Jim DeFrance: A Retrospective. Installation view. Photo: Alyssa Cordova.

DeFrance first began working in Los Angeles during the California Light and Space movement. His works from the 1960s and ’70s, specifically his “Slot” paintings, investigate the viewer’s experience of an art object through light, dimension, and reflective surfaces. In Saint Cloud (1970), a long, rectangular black acrylic painting, rows of dashed horizontal bands cut from the surface reveal the depth of the painting’s wooden framework. Otherworldly, orange, soft green and rose hues appear to radiate from behind each slot, giving the illusion of glowing luminosity. Many pioneer artists of the period, like Robert Irwin and Larry Bell, began as painters, but later transitioned into more complex media and environmental installations; DeFrance stayed largely committed to examining the phenomenology of painting throughout his career.

Jim DeFrance: A Retrospective. Doorways Series, 2007-2009. Installation view. Courtesy of the Jim DeFrance Estate and Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, Orange Coast College. Photo: Eric Stoner.

Considerations such as visual perception, color, and the mechanisms of painting pervade the subsequent works on view. Rainbow (1990) is a bright, colorful, triangular shaped painting on veneer. Wavy line patterns cut into the wood emulate the shape of the painting. DeFrance again deftly creates the perception of fluidity, movement and rhythm, despite the work’s scale and density. Irregular-shaped minimalist paintings like Papillion (2009), vibrantly colored, stained, birch woodwork from the “Doorways Series,” merged his sophisticated craftsmanship as a furniture maker and architecture student with inventive contemporary painting techniques.

Jim DeFrance, Rainbow, 1990. Courtesy of the Jim DeFrance Estate and Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, Orange Coast College. Photo: Eric Stoner.

DeFrance returned to his signature paintings of interlocking shapes in his final works from the “Corvus Series.” Reduced to simplified geometric forms and colors inspired by their namesake, these painted wood works created just before his death are a poignant testament to an inventive and dedicated artist who, despite little recognition from critics or the public, strove to perfect his art until the end.

Jim DeFrance: A Retrospective. Installation view. Left to right: Corvus .05, and Corvus .04, 2012. Courtesy of the Jim DeFrance Estate and Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, Orange Coast College. Photo: Eric Stoner.

“Jim DeFrance: A Retrospective,” on view February 8 – April 7, 2018, at Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, Orange Coast College, Merrimac Way, Costa Mesa, CA  92626.