Roy DeForest Biography

Born in North Platte, Nebraska, Roy DeForest grew up in Yakima, Washington and attended junior college there. He then attended San Francisco Art Institute and earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree at San Francisco State University.

His first show was in 1955. He taught at the University of California, Davis, from 1965 to 1992, along with fellow artists Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley. On the occasion of the exhibit “You See: The Early Years of the UC Davis Art Faculty,” Renny Pritikin of the Nelson Gallery said “History was made in the Central Valley in the early ’60s when five great artists came together on the same faculty for over a decade and changed the nature and perception of art in California forever.” A retrospective organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art toured in 1975. Though primarily known as a painter, he also did sculpture in a similar colorful style. Several of these assemblage pieces, in addition to a few paintings, are in the collection at diRosa.
He lived in Port Costa, California late in life and died Vallejo, California.

Roy De Forest is best known for his comic-like patchwork regionalist (California) style, often depicting dogs and other figurative content in his art.