United States
• 1945
Biography
Neil Jenney (b. 1945, Torrington, Connecticut) is a self-taught American painter and sculptor known for his ironic take on contemporary realism. He briefly studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in 1964 before moving to New York City in 1966, where he continues to live and work. Early in his career, he supported himself as a taxi driver and gathered discarded materials for his art.
Jenney rose to prominence in the late 1960s with his so-called “Bad Paintings", a term coined by critic Marcia Tucker in 1978 to describe his intentionally crude, expressive works — a reaction against the minimalism and photorealism dominating the era. These paintings, such as Saw and Sawed (1969) and Girl and Vase (1969), often depict everyday objects in suggestive cause-and-effect relationships.
Over time, Jenney evolved toward more polished compositions he dubbed “Good Paintings" — technically refined works often framed elaborately and titled in bold uppercase lettering. These address themes of nature, environment, and human interaction with the landscape, as seen in Meltdown Morning (1975) and North America Divided (1992–99).
His work has been exhibited in major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, LACMA, and he was included in Documenta 5 in Kassel (1972). In 2024, Gagosian Gallery presented Idealism Is Unavoidable, a solo exhibition of his recent "Good Paintings."
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