James Jarvaise, the late California modernist (1924—2015), cuts a slick silhouette in Henry Taylor’s vibrant impasto rendering of him. Jarvaise, wearing black shades, his shoulder-length hair combed back, sits slouched at the lower center of Taylor’s glowing, yellow canvas. “He had swag,” Taylor has said of his subject and first real art teacher, who encouraged him to enroll in art school and eventually embark on a path to become the luminous, lauded talent Taylor is today.

Now, in keeping with Taylor’s long-held wish, that portrait he made of Jarvaise between 2015 and 2025, along with many more by both artists spanning seven decades, is on view at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich until September 5, 2026. The exhibition, which traveled from Los Angeles, is titled “James Jarvaise & Henry Taylor. Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked,” in reference to advice Jarvaise once gave Taylor. It is also a poetically apt way into Taylor’s soulful brushstrokes.