Valerie Jaudon was born in Greenville, Mississippi and studied at the Mississippi University for Women, Columbus; Memphis Academy of Art, Tennessee; University of the Americas, Mexico City; and St. Martins School of Art, London, England, completing her graduate studies in 1969. Jaudon has exhibited her work nationally and internationally since the mid-1970’s. She has figured prominently in the development of post-Minimal abstraction and was one of the early artists in the Pattern and Decoration movement.
Valerie Jaudon had her first one-person exhibition at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York in 1977, and since then has had numerous solo shows in the US and Europe, including Galerie Bischofberger in Zurich, the Corcoran Gallery in Los Angeles, Dart Gallery in Chicago, Galerie Hans Strelow in Dusseldorf, MacIntosh/Drysdale in Washington D.C., the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Quadrat Museum in Bottrop Germany, Amerika Haus in Berlin, the Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, among others. From 1982 until 2000 she was represented by the Sidney Janis Gallery. She is currently represented by the DC Moore Gallery in Chelsea.
She has exhibited, as well, in several hundred group shows. They include: the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Gallery, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the La Jolla Museum in California, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, the Ludwig Museum in Aachen, Germany, the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaeck, Denmark, Kunsthallen Brandts in Odense, Denmark, the Porin Taidenmuseo in Pori, Finland and the Mannheimer Kunstverein in Mannheim, Germany.
Jaudon’s work is found in numerous private and public collections in the United States and Europe, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; the Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington: the Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Germany; the Ludwig Museum, Budapest; the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria; the Museu de Arte Moderna, Lisbon; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt; the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2011 she was elected to membership in the National Academy of Design.