Larry Bell

SMVD (Small Mirage Vapor Drawing) #94

1989

The legendary Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s produced many spectacular visual artists, such as Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston and James Turrell. Painter and sculptor Larry Bell is arguably among the most influential of the era’s marquee names. A quintessential contemporary abstract artist, Bell explored light with glass sculptures that are difficult to categorize, while his abstract prints are a meditation on color. Whether working in two or three dimensions, Bell's artistic intuition always leads the way.

Bell was born in 1939 in Chicago and grew up in California. From 1957 to 1959, he attended the Los Angeles Chouinard Art Institute where he created monochromatic abstract oil paintings that drew on Abstract Expressionism. Soon, he began incorporating mirrors and glass in his designs, which eventually evolved into provocative sculptural works.

During the mid-1960s, Bell developed his signature technique of modifying how light moves through and is reflected in his sculptures. Working with glass cubes he built, Bell used an industrial process that sees vaporized metals becoming thin plastic films to be added to the works’ interior panels. He essentially turned his transparent boxes into tapestries of diffuse color. Bell showed his cubes at a solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York City in 1965. The show was a huge success, selling out on its first day.

Bell continued experimenting with new methods and techniques, shifting his focus to larger and more monumental works in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, he developed adjustable glass sculptures with as many as fifty-six panels. He also dabbled in bronze sculpture and furniture design.

Throughout his career, Bell has exhibited widely, with shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Norton Simon Museum in California, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Denver Art Museum, Carré d'Art-Musée d'art contemporain de Nîmes in France and Tate Britain, among many others.

In 2019, gallerist Peter Blake held a show celebrating West Coast minimalism, including the work of Bell as a respected and influential veteran in the space. Later, in 2022, Hauser & Wirth gallery in Los Angeles held a joint exhibition featuring the work of Bell and artist John Chamberlain. The two artists were lifelong friends who met in the 1960s Los Angeles art scene. In a sense, the show brought Bell back full circle.

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