EDUCATION Bachelor of Science in Applied Art, 1951, Montana State College, Bozeman. This liberating sense of connection was confirmed in New York, where Voulkos made contact with painters such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. p. 1. He said, "The quicker I work, the better... if I start thinking and planning, I start contriving and designing. That clay has found a confidently sculptural voice in the 20th century is due largely to his seminal example. He was visited there by the potters Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada and the philosopher Soetsu Yanagi. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Peter Voulkos was born January 29, 1924, in Bozeman, Montana to Greek-born parents, Efrosine and Harry Voulkos, and died February 16, 2002 in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was soon producing more complex fluid assemblages, emphasising the clay's plasticity. Voulkos was the pre-eminent expressionist of clay. Why the Art World Is Embracing Craft. Master of Fine Arts, 1952, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. At 80, Ceramics Legend Ron Nagle Is Still Perfecting His Otherworldly Sculptures. Their loose abstraction paralleled in paint what he now aimed for in clay. Later in the decade Voulkos began wood-firing, introducing rich flame-induced colours to his thickly accreted surfaces. Voulkos freed clay from its traditional, historical, and technical limitations by expanding the aesthetic possibilities to include gesture and sculpturally expressive forms. He was now rewriting the rules of clay; slicing, piercing and manipulating his forms into more open structures. He is survived by Ann, and by two children: Pier, his daughter from his first marriage and a son, Aris, from his second marriage. In the 1970s came a series of scored and punctured discs that deepened his physical synthesis of drawing and sculpture. Articles Featuring Peter Voulkos. It was appropriate that he should have spent his last week doing what he so enjoyed: taking a workshop. Peter Voulkos, an artist who elevated ceramics to new levels of abstraction and personal expression, as well as national prominence, died on Saturday in Bowling Green, Ohio. Hartman, Robert; Kasten, Karl; Melchert, James; Wall, Brian (2002). Peter Voulkos, who has died aged 78, was the giant of post-war American ceramics and a liberating influence on world pottery. In 1943, Peter Voulkos was drafted into the United States Army during the Second World War, serving as an airplane gunner in the Pacific.Voulkos studied painting and printmaking at Montana State College, in Bozeman (now In 1951 Voulkos and Autio became the first resident artists at the In 1953, Voulkos was invited to teach a summer session ceramics course at In 1954, after founding the art ceramics department at the At a New York auction in 2001, a 1986 sculpture by Peter Voulkos was sold $72,625 to a European museum.While his early work was fired in electric and gas kilns, later in his career he primarily fired in the Voulkos's sculptures are known for their visual weight, their freely-formed construction, and their aggressive and energetic decoration. – Peter Voulkos. Disagreements with the more conservative administrators of the LA County Art Institute led to Voulkos’s departure for the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959. In 1950, while still a student, he entered original, spontaneously decorated pots into a competition at Syracuse and won the first of many prizes. Newsletter of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. Portfolio of Peter Voulkos's ceramic plates, ice buckets, stacks and tea bowls, bronzes, paintings and prints, resume, solo and group exhibitions, bibliography, public collections, Voulkos & Co. quest for disposition of earlier work for the catalogue project, newsletter regarding workshops, shows, publications, gallery affiliations and online resources. He then enrolled at Montana State College to study commercial art, but quickly discovered painting and ceramics. Voulkos was born in Bozeman, Montana, to Greek immigrant parents. About Blog Jobs Open Source Press Contact Visit our Help Center. During shaping, he would vigorously tear, pound, and gouge their surfaces. Already influenced by the ceramics of Miró, Picasso and Artigas, he was further excited by a visit to the interdisciplinary Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where he met experimental artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham. "Frances Senska, 1914–2009" (Summer 2010). All rights reserved. His conversion to pottery was typically dramatic; he spent hours in the "mudroom" with clay that he dug himself. His twisting monoliths found favour in Paris, where he was awarded the Rodin Museum prize at the first Biennale; a solo show followed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A man of great charisma and energy, his … Considered too revolutionary by some, he was forced to leave the institute in 1958, but became an assistant professor at Berkeley two months later. He owed much to the gestural force of abstract expressionism, but was also indebted to Japanese pottery and philosophy.