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 writer Curtis Bill Pepper.
Pepper was born Beverly Stoll on December 20, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. At sixteen, she entered the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York to study advertising design, photography, and industrial design. She then embarked on a career as a commercial art director. She studied at Art Students' League and attended night classes at Brooklyn College, including art theory with György Kepes, who introduced her to the work of Lasló Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. It was also at this time, in her mid twenties, that she met the environmental artist Frederick Kiesler. Drawn to post-war Europe in 1949, she studied painting in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. There she attended classes with cubist painter André L'Hôte, and with Fernand Léger at his atelier. She also visited the studios of Ossip Zadkine and Brâncuși.
Pepper began her career as a painter, but after a trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia in 1960, she was so awed by the temple ruins surviving beneath the jungle growth that she turned to sculpture. She made her debut in 1962 with an exhibit of carved tree trunks at a gallery in Rome. After several exhibitions in New York and Rome, she was one of ten artists invited by Giovanni Carandente, along with David Smith, Alexander Calder, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Lynn Chadwick, and Pietro Consagra, to fabricate works in Italsider factories in Italy for an outdoor exhibition, "Sculture nella città", held in Spoleto during the summer of 1962. Beverly Pepper has had a long and extraordinary career. Like her contemporaries Louise Bourgeois and Louise Nevelson, Pepper forged a unique path as a mid-century feminist artist. As the 1960s progressed, Pepper turned to polished stainless steel. In some of the first works, she used a torch to carve used one-inch thick elements of stainless steel. From there, her pieces evolved into highly polished stainless with painted interiors. She was, in fact, one of the first artists, if not the first, to incorporate Cor-Ten steel into sculpture. Beginning in the 1970s, and to the present day, she has lived a bi-continental life traveling between Europe and the United States.
Western Washington University outdoor sculpture collection. The collection has some pieces which qualify as "land art" including Alice Aycock's 1987 "The Islands of the Rose Apple Tree Surrounded by the Oceans of the Word, for You, Oh My Darling," and Nancy Holt's 1977-1978 "Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings." Other artists in the collection include Beverly Pepper, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Isamu Noguchi, Bruce Nauman, Tom Otterness, and Mark di Suvero.
Pepper's works have been exhibited and collected by major museums and galleries throughout the world, including:
deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
The White House Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California
Denver Art Museum, Colorado
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
The Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Les Jardins du Palais Royal, Paris, France
Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy
Forte Belvedere, Florence, Italy
The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria
The Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona, Spain
The Wohl Rose Garden, Jerusalem, Israel
The Contemporary Sculpture Center, Tokyo, Japan
The Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan
Europarkas Sculpture Park, Vilnius, Lithuania
The Bradley Foundation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Gori Collection, Pistoia, Italy
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
The City of Todi, Italy
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Casal Solleric, Majorca, Spain
Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri
The Seattle Art Museum,
Olympic Sculpture...