Beverly Pepper
Encyclopedia
Beverly Pepper is a pioneering sculptor known for her monumental works,site specific and land art. She remains independent from any particular art movement.

Early Life and Education

Born Beverly Stoll, December 20, Brooklyn, New York. At sixteen, enters Pratt Institute, Brooklyn to study advertising design, photography, and industrial design. Begins career as commercial art director. Studies at Art Students’ League and attends night classes at Brooklyn College, including art theory with György Kepes
György Kepes
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago...

, who introduces her to the work of Lasló Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...

. It was also at this time, in her mid twenties, that she met the environmental artist Frederick Kiesler
Frederick John Kiesler
Frederick John Kiesler...

.Drawn to post war Europe in 1949, she studies painting in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Where she attends classes with cubist painter André LHôte, and with Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

 at his atelier. At this time she also visits the studios of Ossip Zadkine
Ossip Zadkine
Ossip Zadkine was a Belarusian-born artist who lived in France. He is primarily known as a sculptor, but also produced paintings and lithographs.-Early years and career:...

 and Brancusi.

Work

Pepper introduces her sculptural vocabulary with integrations of wood carvings and metal castings. Rosiland Krauss describes the works as violating the modernists traditions, “the traditional craft of carving was closed to her … she attacked these logs with electric drills and saws.” After several exhibitions in New York and Rome, she is one of ten artists invited by Giovanni Carandente along with David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...

, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

, Arnaldo Pomodoro
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Arnaldo Pomodoro is an Italian sculptor. He was born on 23 June 1926, in Morciano, Romagna, Italy. He currently lives and works in Milan. His brother, Giò Pomodoro was also a sculptor....

, Lynn Chadwick
Lynn Chadwick
Lynn Russell Chadwick CBE was an English artist and sculptor trained as an architectural draughtsman,but began producing metal mobile sculpture during the 1940s. Chadwick was born in London and went to Merchant Taylor's School.Chadwick was commissioned to produce 3 works for the 1951 Festival of...

, and Pietro Consagra
Pietro Consagra
Pietro Consagra was one of Italy's leading postwar sculptors. Consagra was born in Mazara del Vallo, a town in western Sicily, on October 4. His father, a traveling salesman, did not register his birth until October 6. Consagra attended the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Palermo...

 to fabricate works in Italsider factories in Italy for an outdoor exhibition, “Sculture nella città”, to be held in Spoleto
Spoleto
Spoleto is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is S. of Trevi, N. of Terni, SE of Perugia; SE of Florence; and N of Rome.-History:...

 during the summer of 1962. Working directly in the factory (as she would with subsequent major sculptures) Pepper creates The Gift of Icarus, Leda, Spring Landscape, two other large works, and seventeen smaller ones.


As the sixties progressed, Pepper turned to polished stainless steel. She began making torturous powerful sculptures. In some of the first works she used a torch to carve used one-inch thick elements of stainless. From there, her pieces evolved into highly polished stainless with painted interiors. They are illusionary works that disappear and reappear, mirroring the surrounding landscape. In an interview, Barbara Rose quotes, “Another effect I’m trying to obtain with this bright finish is not simply illusion, but the inclusion of the person looking at it, so that there’s a constant exchange going on between the viewer and the work.” She continues, “My aim here is to invest space with a solidity by filling it with the world around it.”


All her sculptures from the beginning were displayed outdoors -- eventually, she began her experiments using earth to contain a sculpture. “In the seventies I developed the concept of “Earthbound Sculptures”, that is sculptures seemingly born in or rising up from the earth..” Becoming more involved with her native New York in the 70’s, her progressive ideas became realized in commissions such as her seminal work Amphisculpture (1974-76). Furthering her vocabulary in steel, throughout this time period she used Cor-ten steel. While working at a US Steel Factory in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, she was given Cor-ten steel. Relishing in the exposed rusted surfaces of Cor-ten, she made pieces like Dallas Land Canal (1971-75). She was, in fact, one of the first artists, if not the first, to incorporate Cor-Ten steel into sculpture. It was also from that time to the present she has lived a bi-continental life traveling from Europe to the U. S.


Later in the 80’s and 90’s she made works such as Cromlech Glen (restored in 2003), Palengenesis (1993-94) and Sol i Ombra, (1987-92). The works blend nature with industrial materials, as well as inviting the viewer to be a part of the work—“a total environment.” Palengenesis exhibits her fascination with cast iron during this period. Barbara Rose explains, “The theme of Palingenesis is of one element born from another, expressed by a sequence of vertical elements that gradually separate from a wall that generates them. The vertical elements progressively become detached from their context as children individualize themselves from a parent. These themes of genesis and continuity are central to Pepper’s iconography.” In the Barcelona park, Sol I Ombra, the reflective seductive stainless steel of her earlier works have morphed into a fantastic ceramic structure, Cel Caigut. Rose suggests, “Cel Caigut is content–specific as well as site-specific. In an homage to Gaudi, the great turn-of-the-century Catalan architect, pepper covered the earth mound with shimmering ceramic tile, the material Gaudi used in his famous Park Guell..”
Recently, Pepper completed another park project for the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada Calgary Sentinels and Hawk Hill (2008-2010). Pepper says, “I believe my work offers a place for reflection and contemplative thought within the context of active urban environments.”


The works of Beverly Pepper have been exhibited and collected by major museums and galleries throughout the world, including:


The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

The White House Sculpture Garden,Washington, D.C.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.

The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA

Denver Art Museum, CO

Columbus Museum of Art, OH;

Centre George Pompidou, Paris, France

Les Jardins du Palais Royal, Paris, France

Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy

Forte Belvedere, Florence, Italy

The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria

The Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona, Spain

The Wohl Rose Garden, Jerusalem, Israel

The Contemporary Sculpture Center, Tokyo, Japan

The Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan

Europarkas Sculpture Park, Vilnius, Lithuania

The Bradley Foundation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Gori Collection, Pistoia, Italy

Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

The City of Todi, Italy

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis

Museu d'Art Contemporari de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Casal Solleric, Majorca, Spain

Recognition

Throughout the years, she has received several awards, among those: Doctor of Fine Arts, Alumni Achievement Award and the Legends Award, from Pratt Institute; Doctor of Fine Arts, The Maryland Institute; Accademico di Merito, University of Perugia; Cittadinanza Onoraria, Todi, Italy: Amic de Barcelona, city of Barcelona, Spain; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France and The Alexander Calder Prize.

See Also

  • Split Ritual at the U.S. National Arboretum
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