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Artist-professor Roy DeForest dies at 77

UCD colleagues mourn loss of 'magical person' whose work was full of surprises.
By Kim Minugh
BEE STAFF WRITER

Friends and family of Roy DeForest struggled Monday to find the right words to describe the beloved artist, a man so wondrous and complex that simple words could not sum up his being.

So instead, they settled for the same language often used to describe his acclaimed work, which, they said, was an extension of DeForest himself:

Whimsical. Delightful. Charming, yet penetrating, intense and full of meaning. 

He was a man who - like his art - was a "constant surprise," said Harvey Himelfarb, a former colleague at the University of California, Davis, art department.

"I've never been around anyone who was so unpredictable in the way he looked at the world," Himelfarb said. "He was a magical person."

DeForest, a nationally renowned artist and professor, died unexpectedly Friday at the age of 77.

News of his death in a Bay Area hospital during an unrelated doctor's visit sent ripples throughout the art world, which celebrated DeForest as a founding member of the "California funk" art movement.

"There's one less unbelievable imagination in the world," Himelfarb said. Upon hearing of DeForest's death, he said, "I really felt the world had lost a major thinker and a major imagination."

DeForest came from humble beginnings, born to a farmworker family in Nebraska during
DeFOREST, Page B4

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Roy DeForest, above, was acclaimed for paintings like the one at left, which is part of UCD's permanent collection.
UC Davis

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