Beverly Pepper -Contemporary Sculpture

 

 Beverly Pepper (1922 - 2020) - American sculptor known for her monumental works, site specific and land art. She remains independent from any particular art movement.
All of Pepper's sculptures from the beginning of her sculptural career were displayed outdoors. Eventually, she began her experiments using earth to contain a sculpture. "In the seventies I developed the concept of "Earthbound Sculptures", that is sculptures seemingly born in or rising up from the earth."Becoming more involved with her native New York in the 1970s, her progressive ideas became realized in commissions such as her seminal work Amphisculpture (1974-76). Furthering her vocabulary in steel, throughout this time period she used Cor-ten steel. While working at a U.S. steel factory in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, she was given Cor-ten steel. Relishing in the exposed rusted surfaces of Cor-ten, she made pieces like Dallas Land Canal (1971-75). 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. Wikipedia

 

Robert Ryman - Monochrome Painting

 

 Robert Ryman (1930 – 2019) was an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. He was best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings.He lived and worked in New York City. Ryman was often classified as a minimalist; but, he preferred to be known as a "realist", because, he was not interested in creating illusions, but, only in presenting the materials he used in compositions at their face value. As he wrote in a statement for a 2010 exhibition at Pace Wildenstein, "I am not a picture painter. I work with real light and space, and since real light is an important aspect of the paintings, it always presents some problems."The majority of his works feature abstract expressionist-influenced brushwork in white or off-white paint on square canvas or metal surfaces. A lifelong experimenter with media, Ryman painted and/or drew on canvas, linen, steel, aluminum, plexiglas, lumasite, vinyl, fiberglass, corrugated paper, burlap, newsprint, wallpaper, jute sacking, fiberplate, a composite material called gator board, feather board, handmade paper, and acrilivin. He used painted and/or drew with oil, acrylic, encaustic, Lascaux acrylic, casein, enamel, pastel, oil pastel, graphite, guache, and enamelac. Ryman also experimented with printmaking, creating etchings, aquatints, lithographs, and silkscreens. His most famous quote is "There is never any question of what to paint only how to paint."Wikipedia

 

John McCracken - Minimalist art

John Harvey McCracken ( 1934 – 2011) was a minimalist artist. He lived and worked in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and New York.Internationally recognized John McCracken commenced developing his earliest sculptural work while in grad school at California College of Arts and Crafts along with Minimalists John Slorp and Peter Schnore, and painters Tom Nuzum, Vincent Perez, and Terry StJohn, 1964, 1965. Equally well known Dennis Oppenheim, enrolled in the M.F.A. program at nearby Stanford, was a frequent visitor to this more vibrant graduate program. While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, McCracken began to produce art objects made with industrial techniques and materials, plywood, sprayed lacquer, pigmented resin, creating the ever more minimalistic works featuring highly-reflective, smooth surfaces. He applied techniques akin to those used in surfboard construction—popular in Southern California. Later McCracken was part of the Light and Space movement that includes James Turrell, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin and others. In interviews, however, he usually cited his greatest influences as the hard edge works of the Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman and Minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Carl Andre.Wikipedia

Antoni Milkowski - Minimalist Sculpture

Antoni Milkowski (born 1935 – died 2001) was an American minimalist sculptor.
Antoni "Tony" Milkowski was born October 7, 1935 in Evanston, Illinois. He was also known as "Antek", particularly by his family. When he was two years old, the family moved to New York City.
In 1963, while at Hunter College, Milkowski began studying with Tony Smith (sculptor), Ad Reinhardt, Michael Ponce de Leon, George Sugarman and Eugene Goossen. His interactions with these artists, in addition to his meeting David Smith (sculptor), cemented his desire to pursue sculpture. It was in 1964-1965, while a Fulbright Scholar in Poland (where he also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw), that Milkowski was invited to participate in the Biennial of Forms in Space, where he created his first major large-scale public work entitled "Poland Column". During this period, he began to develop his aesthetic of merging geometry and repetition, mainly in modular units and generally in steel. Over the years, he refined his methods and became interested in the concept of negative space and of the three-dimensional form in space. Wikipedia