Kenneth Price

Born 1935 – Died 2012

Kenneth Price was born in Los Angeles and studied at the Chounard Art Institute, Los Angeles County Art Institute and New York State College of Ceramics. His early work consisted of small scale, outlandishly formed works subverted the functionality of traditional ceramics. His first solo exhibition was held at the Ferus Gallery in 1960, when the artist was twenty-five years old, where his work was critically acclaimed. (Lucy Lippard wrote, ‘No one else, on either the east or west coast, is working like Ken Price.’) His work was on the cover of Artforum in 1963, and he had a one-person exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1969. Price lived and worked in California and New Mexico, and in the 1980s and 1990s, he began creating bulbous forms which he would paint in acrylics before sanding and repainting, creating unique surface effects. Drawing also remained a feature of his practice. Later solo exhibitions were held at the Menil Collection in Houston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Posthumous retrospectives have been staged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2012), travelling to the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and at the Drawing Center in New York (2013).