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Bruce Beasley (born 1939, in
Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
) is an American
abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...
sculptor born in Los Angeles and currently living and working in
Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...
. He attended
Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
from 1957–59, and the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
from 1959-62 where he earned his BA.


Career

Beasley ranks among the most productive sculptors of the post-
Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental Bronze sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...
/ David Smith generation of abstract sculptors. Today, Beasley is recognised as one of the most noteworthy and innovative sculptors on the American West Coast. His work can be found in the permanent collection of 40 art museums around the world, including:
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
in
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; the
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: * The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Ne ...
, New York City; the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
; the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...
; the
National Art Museum of China The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC; ) is the national art museum of China and one of the largest art museums in the nation. Located in Beijing and opened since 1963, it is a level-1 public welfare institution funded by the Ministry of Cultur ...
in Beijing; the Musee National d'Art Moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the
Smithsonian Museum of American Art The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...
in Washington, DC; the
Kunsthalle Mannheim The Kunsthalle Mannheim is a museum of modern and contemporary art, built in 1907, established in 1909 and located in Mannheim, Germany. Since then it has housed the city's art collections as well as temporary exhibitions – and up to 1927 those ...
in Germany; and the Islamic Museum in Cairo. A 60 year retrospective exhibition on Bruce Beasley was held on the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey from May 2020 to January 2022.


1960s

In the 1960s, Beasley's first work consisted of welded sculptures made from broken cast iron. This work brought him national recognition when in 1961 one of his sculptures was included in the ground breaking exhibition ''The Art of Assemblage'' at the New York, Museum of Modern Art a piece which appeared in an exhibition which Philip Linhares, Chief Curator of Art of the Oakland Museum of California referred to as "seminal". The following year his assemblage sculpture "Chorus" was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art, making Beasley the youngest artist to have work in the permanent collection. In 1961, while a student at Berkeley, Beasley joined Peter Voulkos in building one of the first sculptor-built foundries, the storied Garbanzo Works that was instrumental in the Renaissance of bronze casting in American sculpture. Following an abstract esthetic, he began casting sculptures in bronze and aluminum. In 1963, he was one of eleven artists to represent the United States at the Biennale de Paris, where French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux awarded him the purchase prize. In 1968, Beasley began investigating the use of transparency as a sculptural medium. He was successful in creating small transparent sculptures in cast acrylic but experts at Dupont and Rohm & Hass were convinced that it was impossible to do castings as large as Beasley envisioned. That year, the State of California invited Beasley to participate in a competition for a monumental sculpture for the state. At first, the jury was unaware that Beasley was experimenting with transparency as a sculptural medium and invited him based on his work in cast metal. Beasley was determined to pursue transparency and proposed a monumental cast acrylic sculpture. Upon seeing Beasley's proposal, they questioned the sculptor about its viability. He convinced them that creating what he envisioned was no problem but privately knew that he would have to invent a new process, which he did. His proposal for ''Apolymon'', a transparent sculpture in cast acrylic won and he installed the piece in Sacramento in 1970.


1970s

Fascinated by the esthetics of transparency, Beasley worked in cast acrylic for the next ten years. In 1974, members of the undersea research community approached Beasley to see if he could adapt his technique to cast transparent bathyspheres for undersea exploration. He succeeded in creating the bathyspheres for
Johnson Sea Link ''Johnson Sea Link'' was a type of deep-sea scientific research submersible built by Edwin Albert Link. Link built the first submersible, ''Johnson Sea Link I'', in 1971 at the request of his friend Seward Johnson, founder of the Harbor Branch ...
submersibles for Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. It was these submersibles that were deployed to locate the crew compartment on the bottom of the ocean after the Space Shuttle '' Challenger'' disintegrated upon liftoff in 1986. Beasley continued to make transparent sculpture for the next ten years. His transparent sculptures were exhibited widely both in the US and abroad including solo exhibitions in 1972 at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, the
Santa Barbara Museum of Art The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is an art museum located in downtown Santa Barbara, California. Founded in 1941, it is home to both permanent and special collections, the former of which includes Asian art, Asian, Visual arts of the United ...
, the
San Diego Museum of Art The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine art museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. It opened as the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego on February 28, 1926, and changed ...
, and group shows including the
Salon de Mai The Salon de Mai (the ''salon (gathering), May Salon'') is a group of French artists which formed in a café on the Rue Dauphine in Paris in 1943 during the German occupation of France during World War II, German occupation of France.Ferrier, Jean ...
in Paris and at
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in
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,
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
.


1980s

In 1980, Beasley turned back to metal, exploring a more formal geometry with a series of large sculptures produced in both stainless steel and aluminum. He created a number of monumental commissions for public institutions including the
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,
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
; the
State of California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
; the
State of Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the norther ...
; the
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; the City of
Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie River (Oregon), McKenzie and Willamette River, Willamette rivers, ...
; and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. In 1987, he turned to a new direction of work involving cube-like intersecting polyhedra. While most of these were made in cast or fabricated bronze, he also created them in carved granite. This work has been exhibited worldwide in more than 100 exhibitions in Europe and Asia. Public commissions for this series have included the cities of Oakland, California;
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,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
;
Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...
, Germany;
Bad Homburg Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (, ) is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, Germany, on the southern slope of the Taunus mountains. Bad Homburg is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. The town's official name is ''Bad Homburg ...
, Germany;
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,
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;
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; as well as the
University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...
and
Miami University Miami University (informally Miami of Ohio or simply Miami) is a public university, public research university in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the second-oldest List of colleges and universities in Ohio, university in Ohi ...
in
Oxford, Ohio Oxford is a city in northwestern Butler County, Ohio, United States. The population was 23,035 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A college town, Oxford was founded as a home for Miami University and lies in the southwestern portion ...
. In 2008, Beasley began sculpting a new series of intersecting stainless steel disks. One of this series, commissioned by the Chinese government for the Beijing Summer Olympics"Bruce Beasley to Create Work for Olympics", '' San Francisco Chronicle'' (5 August 2008) is 15 feet tall and remains permanently installed as part of the Beijing Olympic Park. The
Expo 2010 Expo 2010, officially the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010. It was a major World Expo registered by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), in the ...
in
Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...
also commissioned a large sculpture in this series for permanent installation in Shanghai.


Publishing

*''Bruce Beasley: Skulpturen'' (''Bruce Beasley: Sculpture'') (The Stadtiche Kunsthalle Mannheim, 1994) monograph which includes articles by Peter Selz and Manfred Fath, *''Sculpture by Bruce Beasley'' (The Oakland Museum of California, 2005), monograph which includes articles by Albert Elsen and Peter Frank,


Works

* '' Big Red'' (1974), Eugene, Oregon * '' Encounter'' (2003–2004), Eugene, Oregon


References


External links


Documentary by KQED-TV's ''Spark'' on Bruce BeasleyKCBX-FM Public Radio, Part I, Interview with sculptor Bruce Beasley, (7 October 2009)KCBX-FM Public Radio, Part II, Interview with sculptor Bruce Beasley, (14 October 2009)KCBX-FM Public Radio, 6 July 2005 Interview with Phil Linhares, Chief Curator of Art, The Oakland Museum of California, discussing the sculpture of Bruce BeaselyBruce Beasley website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beasley, Bruce 1939 births Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni Dartmouth College alumni Sculptors from Los Angeles