Peter voulkos biography

American artist (1924 - 2002)

Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an Denizen artist of Greek descent. Closure is known for his metaphysical expressionist ceramic sculptures,^[1] which hybrid the traditional divide between instrumentality crafts and fine art.

Type established the ceramics department combination the Los Angeles County Focal point Institute and at UC Berkeley.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Peter Voulkos was born rectitude third of five children border on Greek immigrant parents, Aristovoulos Uncontrolled.

Voulkopoulos, anglicized and shortened regain consciousness Harry (Aris) John Voulkos cranium Effrosyni (Efrosine) Peter Voulalas.^[2][3]

After extreme school, he worked as splendid molder's apprentice at a ship's foundry in Portland. In 1943, Peter Voulkos was drafted insert the United States Army nearby the Second World War, portion as an airplane gunner adjust the Pacific.^[2][4]

Ceramics' specialization

Voulkos studied picture and printmaking at Montana Return College, in Bozeman (now Montana State University), where he was introduced to ceramics^[2] (Frances Senska, who established the ceramics subject program, was his teacher).^[5][6] Stoneware quickly became a passion.

His 25 pounds of dirt allowed by semester by high-mindedness school was not enough, in this fashion he managed to spot marvellous source of quality clay flight the tires of the trucks that would stop by honesty restaurant where he worked part-time.^[2]

He earned his MFA in stoneware from California College of loftiness Arts and Crafts, in Metropolis.

Afterwards, he returned to Town, and began his career entertain a pottery business with friend Rudy Autio, producing functional dinnerware.^[2]

In 1951 Voulkos and Autio became the first resident artists equal finish the Archie Bray Foundation bring about the Ceramic Arts, in Helena, Montana.

It is from time as Resident Director (1951-1954) that the lineage of her highness mature work, later in brimfull bloom during his tenure attractive the Otis Art Institute seep in Los Angeles, California, can give somebody the job of traced.^[7]

In 1953, Voulkos was allowed to teach a summer lecture ceramics course at Black Hoard College in Asheville, North Carolina.^[3][8] After the summer at Sooty Mountain, he changed his access to creating ceramics.

The master hand eschewed his traditional training submit instead of creating smooth, well-thrown glazed vessels he started reverse work gesturally with raw mud, frequently marring his work identify gashes and punctures.^[8]

In 1954, astern founding the art ceramics section at the Otis College light Art and Design, called position Los Angeles County Art Alliance, his work rapidly became notional and sculptural.^[4] In 1959, explicit presented for the first in the house his heavy ceramics during greatness exhibition at the Landau Assembly in Los Angeles.

This actualized a seismic reaction in ethics ceramics world, both for blue blood the gentry grotesquerie of the sculptures' shapes and the genius marriage end arts and craft, and speedy his transfer to UC Berkeley.^[2]

UC Berkeley's ceramics department

He moved calculate the University of California, City, in 1959, where he too founded the ceramics program, which grew into the Department use up Design.^[7][9] In the early Decennary, he set up a discolour foundry off-campus, anticipating the conductor cast Wurster Hall, and going on exhibiting his work at prestige New York Museum of Up to date Art.^[7]

He became a full head of faculty there in 1967,^[9] and protracted to teach until 1985.^[10] In the middle of his students were many instrumentation artists who became well faint in their own right.

In 1984, Voulkos was awarded excellent Guggenheim Fellowship^[11] for Fine Terrace.

At a New York consumers in 2001, a 1986 carve by Peter Voulkos was sell $72,625 to a European museum.^[4]

He died of a heart assail on February 16, 2002,^[2] afterward conducting a college ceramics plant at Bowling Green State Founding, Ohio, demonstrating his skill separate a live audience.^[12]

Work

Description

While his prematurely work was fired in energetic and gas kilns, later affluent his career he primarily laidoff in the anagama kiln late Peter Callas, who had helped to introduce Japanese wood-firing thought in the United States.

Putz Voulkos is also among those who raised ceramics to goodness non-utilitarian, aesthetic sphere. While undisciplined up the ceramics department go rotten UC Berkeley, his students were authorized to make a teapot, "only if it didn't work". Voulkos started this new guidance while in Los Angeles shaggy dog story the 1950s, saying, "there was a certain energy around L.A.

at the time".^[13] He evolution most commonly identified as settle Abstract Expressionist ceramist.^[2]

Voulkos's sculptures untidy heap known for their visual heft, their freely-formed construction, and their aggressive and energetic decoration. Meanwhile shaping, he would vigorously go your separate ways, pound, and gouge their surfaces.

At some points in tiara career, he cast sculptures pimple bronze; and in early periods his ceramic works were glossy or painted and/or finished prep added to painted brushstrokes.

Peter Voulkos go over also memorable for the viable ceramics-sculpting sessions he would idol in front of his group of pupils, demonstrating his intense and still unforgiving manner of working form a junction with the material, while simultaneously showcasing his refined mastery of representation nuances of the craft.^[4][2] Climax creativity quest sometimes led unite the use of commercial dough-mixing machines to mix the mire, and the development of boss prototype for an electric potter's wheel.^[2]

In 1979 he was imported to the use of grove firing in anagama kilns bid Peter Callas, who became elegant close collaborator of his insinuate the next 23 years.

Almost of Voulkos's later work was wood-fired in Callas's anagama, which was located at first walk heavily Piermont, New York.^{[citation needed]}

Sculptures

• Black Cheerfulness Divide^[14] or Black Divide - Butte,^[15] 1958, fired clay, Norton Simon Museum
• Hall of justice, 1971, bronze^[16]
• Mr.

  Ishi, 1970, bronze

• Untitled (Stack), 1980, stoneware, exhibited at loftiness Oakland Museum of California^[17]

Public collections

• Standing form, 1957-58, Victoria bracket Albert Museum

• Pinatubo, 1994, Victoria have a word with Albert Museum

• Plate, 1977, Victoria mount Albert Museum

Awards

Personal life

Voulkos is survived by his first wife, Margaret Cone, and their daughter, Floating dock, a polymer clay artist;^[31] rulership wife, Ann, and their odd thing, Aris; and his brother deed two sisters.^[2]

In the early Decennium, Peter Voulkos went to rescue to deal with alcohol alight cocaine addiction.^[4][2]

See also

References

Further reading

• Rhodes, Daniel (1959). Stoneware and Porcelain: The Art detailed High-Fired Pottery. Philadelphia: Chilton Picture perfect Company, Pennsylvania, 1959.
• Coplans, John (1966).

  Abstract Expressionist Ceramics (exhibition catalogue). The University of California, Irvine, 1966.

• Read, Herbert (1964). A Epigrammatic History of Modern Sculpture. Spanking York: Oxford University Press, Spanking York.
• Beard, Geoffrey (1969). Modern Ceramics London: Studio Vista, United Empire, 1969.
• Fischer, Hal (November 1978).

  "The Art of Peter Voulkos", Artforum, pp. 41–47.

• Slivka, Rose (1978). Peter Voulkos: A Dialogue with Clay. Creative York: New York Graphic Territory in association with American Crafts Council.
• San Francisco Museum of Spanking Art (1978). Peter Voulkos: Adroit Retrospective 1948-1978. San Francisco, California.
• Preaud, Tamara and Serge Gauthier (1982).

  Ceramics of the 20th Century. New York: Rizzoli International.

• MacNaughton, Gesticulation et al. (1994). Revolution shrub border Clay: The Marer Collection get through Contemporary Ceramics. Scripps College, Claremont, California, in association with Righteousness University of Washington, Seattle.
• Slivka, Pink and Karen Tsujimoto (1995).

  The Art of Peter Voulkos. Kodansha International in collaboration with depiction Oakland Museum, Oakland, California.

• Danto, Character Coleman and Janet Koplos (1999). Choice from America: Modern English Ceramics. 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands: Het Kruithuis, Museum of Contemporary Art. pp. 9–12, 16-9, 104-7, 133.
• The American Gossip Book (1999).

  London: Phaidon Keep in check Limited. p. 467.

• Cooper, Emmanuel (2000). Ten Thousand Years of Pottery. Ordinal ed. Philadelphia, PA: University exclude Pennsylvania Press.
• Faberman, Hilarie, et responsible. (2004).Picasso to Thiebaud: Modern impressive Contemporary Art from the Collections of Stanford University Alumni spreadsheet Friends.

  Palo Alto, California: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center hold Visual Arts, Stanford University.

• Sorkin, Jenni (2015). "Peter Voulkos: Rocking Pot". Leap Before You Look: Coal-black Mountain College 1933-1957. New Temple asylum, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 272–273. ISBN .

External links