Laddie John Dill

Abstract Expressionist Glass, Cement, and Polymer Painting by Laddie Dill

1984

Laddie John Dill was born in Long Beach, California, in 1943. He graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute in 1968 with a BFA. After graduating, Dill became a printing apprentice and worked closely with established artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns.

A Los Angeles artist, Dill had his first solo exhibition in New York City with Sonnabend Gallery in 1971. He was one of the first Los Angeles artists to exhibit Light and Space work in New York. He exhibited the “Light Sentences” and “Light Plains” sculptures in institutions across the United States and globally, and has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in these pieces in the last decade as well, including an acquisition of a “Light Plains” sculpture by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is currently on view in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

Dill has been crafting light and earthly materials like concrete, glass, sand, and metal into luminous sculptures, wall pieces, and installations since the 1970s. Referring to his choice of materials, Dill explains: “I was influenced by (Robert) Rauschenberg, Keith Sonnier, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Irwin, who were working with earth materials, light and space as an alternative to easel painting.” When Dill does use canvas, he paints with pigments derived from cement and natural oxides.

Dill’s works are in the permanent collections of national and international institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Art, California; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the High Museum, Atlanta; and elsewhere. He currently lives and works in Venice, California, where he maintains a studio.

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