Ken Price: A Selected Survey (1960-1995)

The Beaver College Art Gallery is pleased to present “Ken Price: A Selected Survey” November 9 through December 20, 1995, located in the Spruance Art Center on the campus. Price will present a public lecture in conjunction with the exhibition on Tuesday, November 28, at 7 PM, in Stiteler Auditorium, followed by a reception in his honor in the Art Gallery. Both events are free and open to the public.

Ken Price is one of the most important ceramic sculptors to have emerged in California since 1945. Using glazed and painted ceramic as his primary medium, Price is renowned for producing forms of startling beauty, color, and mystery.  While often small in scale, his variations on traditional forms such as the cup and the vase, and his free-form biomorphic sculptures, are surprisingly powerful with large frames of formal references. These works play out in clay aspects of both surrealism and geometric abstraction.  Eluding easy characterization, his work forcefully spans the divide between fine art and crafts, occupying a unique position and demanding recognition as the oeuvre of a mature and major talent.

Price’s exhibition at Beaver College will include examples of work from the late sixties to the present. “We are honored to present the sculpture of such an important American artist as Ken Price in our gallery,” notes Gallery Director Paula Marincola. “That he does not often visit the East Coast and so infrequently speaks publicly about his work makes this lecture an especially significant event in our community.”

Price, who was born in 1935 in Los Angeles, received a B.F.A. from the University of Southern California in 1956. From 1955 to 1956, he studied with Peter Voulkos, and it was during this time that he came into contact with other artists of the nascent sixties’ Los Angeles art scene. In 1958, Price received his M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred. He has exhibited his work extensively around the world. In 1992, the Menil Collection in Houston, organized a major retrospective of his work that also traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Price is represented in New York by Franklin Parrasch Gallery; he currently lives in Venice, California.

“Ken Price: A Selected Survey” has been funded by The Arcadia Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Friends of Beaver College Art Gallery. The artist’s lecture is funded in part by a grant from The Montgomery County Foundation and the Forum Committee.  A catalogue documenting the exhibition with an essay by prominent New York art critic Carter Ratcliff is forthcoming. Beaver College Art Gallery wishes to acknowledge the cooperation and assistance of Franklin Parrasch Art Gallery, New York, in realizing this exhibition.