Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, the American painter whose work captured an unflinching portrayal of contemporary America, died at her home in Los Angeles on Friday. She was 46. The news was announced by her gallery, Jeffrey Deitch, who is set to open a solo show of the artist’s recent work on April 17 at their Los Angeles outpost. No cause of death was specified.
“An artist of remarkable talent and sensibility, Dupuy-Spencer was beloved by her fellow artists and members of the creative community in Los Angeles and New York,” the gallery shared in an Instagram post. “I spent time in Los Angeles with her, at her house and in her studio, talking talking talking,” wrote Nina MacLaughlin, a writer who worked with the artist on her forthcoming Monocelli monograph, in a Substack post. “Her voice was low. Her smile was wide. She was ferocious and funny and lonely and deeply kind. She had a mind like no one has had a mind. Working on the project, I spent months living inside her brain, living inside her paintings. It was not comfortable. It was dangerous there and I felt the danger…‘What a tiny chunk of time we have,’ she said to me at one point. ‘This is our one opportunity and we spend it being afraid to find out how big we are psychologically.’”
Dupuy-Spencer was known for making electrically charged tableaus that soberly addressed political tensions and power structures—and depicted tender intimacies and displays of solidarity in equal measure. She worked primarily with oil paint, sweeping energetic brushstrokes across large-scale canvases. Her often-figurative paintings are layered with rich, intersecting narratives that construct an honest view of an ever-evolving America. The artist is best known for works that capture crucial moments in contemporary history, including Durham, August 14, 2017 (2017) which features a toppled confederate monument, and Don’t You See That I Am Burning (2021), a portrayal of the January 6th insurrection in which thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol. In other works, Dupuy-Spencer painted mundane moments, in the bedroom or at the family table.
The artist was born in New York in 1979 to a prominent New Orleans family. Her father was the novelist Scott Spencer, and her mother, Coco Dupuy, dabbled in painting. She grew up in Rhinebeck, New York, and for a period studied art at Bard College under painters including Nicole Eisenman and Amy Sillman. Dupuy-Spencer was one of the few painters to be included in the sculpture-heavy 2017 Whitney Biennial, and she also participated in the Hammer Museum’s 2018 Made in L.A. biennial, which earned her acclaim.
Dupuy-Spencer’s upcoming presentation at Jeffrey Deitch in L.A. marks the artist’s first solo presentation in five years. Monacelli is set to publish her first monograph, entitled Burning in the Eyes of the Maker, this June. Past solo exhibitions include presentations at Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles, Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, and Marlborough Contemporary in New York. Dupuy-Spencer’s work is held in collections including the Hirschhorn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the San Francisco Museum of American Art (SFMOMA).
