Henry Taylor’s Teacher Gets a Zurich Spotlight
At Hauser & Wirth in Zurich, a new exhibition is reframing Henry Taylor’s practice through the artist who first recognized his talent. “James Jarvaise & Henry Taylor. Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked” brings together works by Taylor and James Jarvaise across seven decades, and it remains on view until September 5, 2026 after traveling from Los Angeles.
The pairing is rooted in Taylor’s own history. He began taking Jarvaise’s classes at Oxnard Community College in the 1980s, and has long described the older painter as his first real art teacher. That relationship, curator Ingrid Schaffner said in an interview, was central to the exhibition’s conception. Taylor wanted to make the project happen as a way of honoring a mentor whose influence shaped his early development.
Jarvaise, born in 1924 in the Midwest and dead in 2015, is not widely known today, but he occupied an important place in postwar California art. He served in the U.S. Army, studied on the GI Bill, and became part of the first generation of professional art teachers in the United States. He taught for years in Southern California, including at the University of Southern California, CalArts, and Occidental. His “Hudson River Series” was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark 1959 exhibition “Sixteen Americans,” alongside works by Jay DeFeo, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella.
Schaffner said the exhibition is less a historical survey than a conversation between two bodies of work. Hung salon style and left unlabeled on the wall, the paintings invite viewers to notice formal echoes and divergences without the usual hierarchy of names. Taylor’s own portrait of Jarvaise, begun around 2014–2015 and completed in connection with the exhibition, underscores that dialogue.
The show also complicates the familiar reading of Taylor as a painter primarily of portraiture. Schaffner pointed to the importance of landscape in his work, suggesting that the Zurich installation reveals a broader visual language than many viewers expect. That matters now, as Taylor’s profile continues to expand: he currently has a major solo exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris, and his traveling survey “Henry Taylor: B Side” moved from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, to the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2023.
By placing teacher and student in direct conversation, the Zurich exhibition turns gratitude into structure. It also restores attention to Jarvaise, whose influence on Southern California art extended far beyond the classroom.
