Helen H. "Lee" Deffebach

American, 1928-2005


A 1960 review in The Village Voice praised the works in Lee Deffebach's one-woman show, saying that "The best thing happening on 10th Street now is Lee Deffebach's work at Camino.  The colors are lyric, jazzy, loud.  It's a deep breath of fresth air after the conscious naivete, the Oh-shucks earnestness filling most of the galleries."  Deffebach, trained at the University of Utah, joined Alice Neel, Elaine deKooning, and others in the vibrant 10th Street gallery community that thrived in the late 1950s and early 60s.  


Lee Deffebach - In her own words (2001)

"My paintings solve no problem, they make no statement, there is no intrusion by them on the viewer. I work with color, shape and line until I find the painting comfortable to look on, to muse upon.


Relationships of color, shapes and edges are contemplated as a celebration of the momentary ordering of the unknown.


Each stroke, a result of the one before it, comes not from a preconceived plan…but from continual observation of the relationships emerging. Where one painting leaves off another begins, on and on as if they were one continuous painting.


A painting can take you somewhere else, suddenly and simply, to places that you could never, in reality, go.


Painting becomes its own reality.


You take a walk in your own landscape."