1990
Celebrated internationally for her large-scale abstract sculptures and site-specific works, provocative environmental artist Beverly Pepper was renowned for her ability to transform unwieldy industrial metals such as Cor-Ten steel and cast iron into seemingly weightless objets d’art.
Born in 1922 in Brooklyn, New York, Pepper studied advertising design, photography and industrial design at Pratt Institute before embarking on a career as a commercial art director. Meanwhile, she also attended the Art Students League and studied art theory at Brooklyn College under Hungarian painter György Kepes, who introduced her to the works of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy.
In 1949, Pepper shifted her interest from commercial art to painting, studying in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. There, she met Cubist painters André Lhote and Fernand Léger, and visited the studios of Constantin Brâncusi and Ossip Zadkine. Pepper’s work at the time, owing to her experiences in Europe following the war, was largely characterized by a social realist perspective.
Pepper developed a passion for sculpting following a trip to Angkor Wat in Cambodia in 1960. She made her debut in 1962 with a series of carved tree trunks at a gallery in Rome. That same year, Pepper was invited to exhibit at the “Festival of Two Worlds” show in Spoleto, Italy alongside the likes of Henry Moore and Alexander Calder. To prepare for the exhibition, Pepper quickly learned how to weld and soon became an accomplished metalworker — an unusual skill for women at the time.
By the late 1960s and 1970s, Pepper became known for her stainless-steel abstract and still-life sculptures such as Matera Scatolata. She also created several abstract geometric, foil-embossed collage prints including Collage 1 and Collage 3. In later years, she used heavier materials including bronze, iron and Cor-Ten steel in her modern monumental works such as Curved Presence.
Throughout her sculpting career, Pepper had countless solo exhibitions and participated in group shows, and won several awards, including the Allied Arts Honor Award by the American Institute of Architects in 1999, the Alexander Calder Prize in 2000 and the International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Her sculptures are part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.
On 1stDibs, discover authentic Beverly Pepper sculptures and prints.
Beverly Pepper Large Bronze Wall Relief Plaque Heavily Textured Woman Artist
By Beverly Pepper
Located in Surfside, FL
Beverly Pepper is an American sculptor known for her monumental works, site specific and land art. She remains independent from any particular art movement. She was married to the wr...
Bronze
Large Bronze Bas Relief Danse Macabre Expressionist Sculpture Totentantz
Located in Surfside, FL
We have not located any markings on the piece and it does not appear to be signed. it bears similarities with works by Wilfredo Lam and other Cuban and Latin American masters and it ...
Bronze
Bronze Sculpture Wall Relief Judaica Jewish Matriarchs Modernist Leonard Baskin
By Leonard Baskin
Located in Surfside, FL
Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) Jewish Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah with Hebrew calligraphy Bronze, 1998 9.5 X 9 inches Judaic biblical bronze of Jewish mothers. Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher. Baskin was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While he was a student at Yale University, he founded Gehenna Press, a small private press specializing in fine book production. From 1953 until 1974, he taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Subsequently Baskin also taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He lived most of his life in the U.S., but spent nine years in Devon at Lurley Manor, Lurley, near Tiverton, close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated Crow. Sylvia Plath dedicated Sculpto to Leonard Baskin in her famous work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960). The Funeral Contege (1997) bronze, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C. His public commissions include a bas relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and a bronze statue of a seated figure, erected in 1994 for the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His works are owned by many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art and the Vatican Museums. The archive of his work at the Gehenna Press was acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, in 2009. The McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario owns over 200 of his works (some religious and biblical), most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin. Contemporary Religious Imagery in American Art. Catalog for an exhibition held at the Ringling Museum of Art, March 1-31, 1974. Artists represented: David Aronson, Leonard Baskin, Max Beckmann, Hyman Bloom, Fernando Botero, Paul Cadmus, Marvin Cherney, Arthur G. Dove, Philip Evergood, Adolph Gottlieb, Jonah Kinigstein, Arman, Rico Lebrun, Jack Levine, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Abraham Rattner, Ben Shahn, Mark Tobey, Max Weber, William Zorach and others.In 1955, he was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery, they showed many great artists, Chaim Koppelman, for many years, headed the gallery's Print Division; printmakers such as Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Robert Conover...
Bronze
Large George Aarons Terracotta Sculpture Relief Art Deco Plaque WPA Artist
By George Aarons
Located in Surfside, FL
Two Figures (Mother and son) 9" x 17" terracotta sculpture, signed lower left mounted to wood panel, 15 1/2" x 23 1/2" George Aarons (born Gregory Podubisky, in St. Petersburg, Russ...
Terracotta, Wood
Large Judaica Copper Repousse Sculpture Relief Plaque Arie Merzer Bezalel Era
By Arieh Merzer
Located in Surfside, FL
Arieh Merzer (Israeli, 1905-1966) Copper relief sculpture panel in gilt frame Framed dimensions 18 X 26.25, copper 14.5 X 22.5 Arieh Merzer ...
Metal, Copper
Heavy Bronze Relief Plaque, Young King David with Harp
By Hana Geber
Located in Surfside, FL
American sculptor Hana Geber (1910 - 1990) She was born in Prague of Czechoslovakian heritage and eventually settled in New York. Her sculptures deal with Jewish themes She taught s...
Bronze
