Jack Spicer
"Untitled (Abstract)", 1958
Pastel on paper
11 x 11 3/4 inches (27.9 x 29.8 cm)
Courtesy of the Jess Collins Trust


Selected by Gary Garrels

Jack Spicer (1925-1965) was a San Francisco-based poet whose work was associated with other figures of the so-called San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s like Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser. Spicer also co-founded the Six Gallery in San Francisco 1954, a space that entered literary history as the scene of Allen Ginsberg’s first public reading of his poem, Howl, and art history as the site for exhibitions of Beat generation artists like Bruce Conner and Jay DeFeo. Spicer made very few art works, and the Jess Collins Estate reports that only two crayon drawings are still extant.