Joyce Pensato
Joyce Pensato painted exuberant and explosive large-scale likenesses of cartoon characters and comic-book heroes. Her seemingly frenzied technique – involving the deliberate accretion of successive layers of bold linear gestures, rapid spattering and frequent erasures – results in alternately humorous and sinister imagery. While her prima facie subject matter ranged from Batman, The Simpsons and Mickey Mouse to Felix the Cat and Elmo from Sesame Street, her artistic progenitors include Alberto Giacometti, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Philip Guston. Taking much of her material from her surroundings in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York – from graffitied walls to hand-scrawled shop signs – Pensato painted almost exclusively in shop-bought black and white enamel, while also employing charcoal and pastel for smaller-scale drawings. Pensato's oversized murals, often taking weeks to complete, were additional leaps away from the studio-based, monochrome world she generally inhabited, as were her sporadic bursts of colour, especially silver and gold.
Joyce Pensato (1941–2019) was born in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions included Grice Bench, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2018); Petzel Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, USA (2016); Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria (2016); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX, USA (2015); High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, USA (2014); Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, USA (2013); and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO, USA (2013). Group exhibitions included those at South London Gallery, London, UK (2018); Drawing Room, London, UK (2018); Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, USA (2017); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, USA (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2017); Aïshti Foundation, Jar el-Dib, Beirut, Lebanon (2016); Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark (2016); and 'Empire State', curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Sir Norman Rosenthal at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2013). Pensato’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA, USA; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA; the Dallas Museum of Art, TX, USA; St Louis Art Museum, MO, USA and the FRAC des Pays de la Loire, France. She won numerous awards in her lifetime, including the Robert de Niro, Sr. Prize (2013), the Award of Merit Medal for Painting, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2012), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (1997) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1996).
Joyce Pensato
Take Me to Your Leader
2018
Charcoal and pastel on paper
274.3 x 1270 cm
108 x 500 in
Joyce Pensato
SmackDown! Lisa
2018
Charcoal and pastel on paper
228.6 x 229.2 cm
90 x 90 1/4 in
Joyce Pensato
Four Donalds-1
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
182.9 x 162.6 cm
72 x 64 in
Joyce Pensato
Four Donalds-2
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
182.9 x 162.6 cm
72 x 64 in
Joyce Pensato
Four Donalds-3
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
182.9 x 162.6 cm
72 x 64 in
Joyce Pensato
Four Donalds-4
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
182.9 x 162.6 cm
72 x 64 in
Joyce Pensato
Landscape Mickey
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
203.2 x 325 x 4 cm
80 x 128 x 1 5/8 in
Joyce Pensato
Here's Mickey
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
233.7 x 213.4 x 4 cm
92 x 84 x 1 5/8 in
Joyce Pensato
The Erased Batman
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
229 x 182.9 x 4 cm
90 1/8 x 72 x 1 5/8 in
Joyce Pensato
Homer in the Hood
2017
Charcoal on paper
273 x 233.5 cm
107 1/2 x 91 7/8 in
Joyce Pensato
Crazy Good Donald
2017
Charcoal on paper
269 x 406 cm
105 7/8 x 159 7/8 in
Joyce Pensato
FORGETABOUTITBATMAN
2017
Enamel and metallic paint on linen
254 x 406.4 x 4 cm
100 x 160 x 1 5/8 in
Joyce Pensato
Rhumba Mickey
2017
Charcoal on paper
76 x 55.5 cm
29 7/8 x 21 7/8 in
Joyce Pensato
Kyle the Guy with the Green hat
2017
Charcoal on paper
56.5 x 41.2 cm
22 1/4 x 16 1/4 in
Joyce Pensato
Joyceland in London 1981-2014
Studio accumulation from 1981 to present day
Dimensions variable
Joyce Pensato
Joyceland in London 1981-2014
Studio accumulation from 1981 to present day
Dimensions variable
Joyce Pensato
Joyceland in London 1981-2014
Studio accumulation from 1981 to present day
Dimensions variable
Joyce Pensato
Rabbit gone mad
2014
Collage
Joyce Pensato
Donald and the gang
2014
Charcoal and pastel on paper and collage
41 x 64.6 cm
Joyce Pensato
Two Jerrys
2014
Collage
Joyce Pensato
Jojo
2014 Enamel on canvas 121.9 x 121.9 cm 48 x 48 in
Joyce Pensato
Everlast
2014
Collage
Joyce Pensato
Them Eyes
2014
Enamel and metallic paint on canvas
152.4 x 121.9 cm 60 x 48 in
Joyce Pensato
Felix
2007
Enamel and metalic paint on linen
Joyce Pensato
Marge in Hell
2008
Charcoal and watercolour on watercolour paper
350 x 158 cm 137.8 x 50.6 in
Exhibitions
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Joyce Pensato: FORGETTABOUT IT
19 May – 24 June 2017
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Joyce Pensato: Joyceland
26 March – 10 May 2014
