Skip Navigation

Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place

DATES June 05, 1987 through August 03, 1987
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT Contemporary Art
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
  • June 5, 1987 PRESS PREVIEW TRANSPORTATION FROM MANHATTAN T.O THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM AND RETURN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3
    A special bus to transport members of the press to the preview of Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place will depart from in front of the Plaza Hotel promptly at 9:30 a.m., and return at 12 noon from The Brooklyn Museum to the same Manhattan location. To reserve seating on the bus, please call (718)638-5000, ext. 330.

    Date: Wednesday, June 3, 1987
    Time: 10 a.m. to 12 noon
    Location: Rotunda, 5th floor
    Exhibition Dates: June 5 -. August 3, 1987

    Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place, an important exhibition surveying the work of the contemporary American sculptor over the last twenty years, will be on view at The Brooklyn Museum from June 5 through August 3, 1987. The presentation includes more than 60 works ranging from the artist’s highly polished stainless steel sculptures of the 1960s and her earthbound geometric pieces of the 1970s to her monolithic constructions of recent years. It also includes photographs and models of several site-specific sculptures created by the artist in various parts of the United States and Europe.

    In celebration of her exhibition and return to Brooklyn, the Museum has installed four of the artist’s monumental sculptures on the plaza in front of the Museum. Each of these large columns measures between 28 and 36 feet in height and weighs between five and eight tons.

    The exhibition has been organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. It was made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. It was also supported by a grant from Knoll International Holdings, Inc.

    Refreshments will be served.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1987, 048-49.
    View Original
  • June 3, 1987 Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place, an important exhibition surveying the work of the contemporary American sculptor over the last twenty years, will be on view at The Brooklyn Museum from June 5 through August 3, 1987. The presentation will include more than 60 works ranging from the artist’s highly polished stainless steel sculptures of the 1960s and her earthbound geometric pieces of the 1970s to her monolithic constructions of recent years. It will also include photographs and models of several site-specific sculptures created by the artist in various parts of the United States and Europe.

    In celebration of her exhibition and return to Brooklyn, the Museum will install four of the artist’s monumental sculptures on the plaza in front of the Museum. Each of these large columns measures between 28 feet and 36 feet in height and weighs between five and eight tons.

    Beverly Pepper, who now divides her time between New York and Todi, Italy, was born in Brooklyn in 1924. At sixteen she entered Pratt Institute to study advertising design, photography, and industrial design. In 1949, after also studying at the Art Students League and attending night classes at Brooklyn College, where she was introduced to the work of Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, she moved to Paris and studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

    Although she returned to the United States in 1950, she continued to travel extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East. During a visit to the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, in 1960 the artist experienced a profound change in her artistic development. “I walked into Angkor Wat a painter,” she says, “and left a sculptor.”

    Pepper began sculpting in wood, then turned to metal. Her first welded works appeared with those of David Smith and Alexander Calder, among others, at the 1962 Spoleto Festival in Italy. Always in search of new ways to express her ideas, she worked first with Cor-Ten steel, then with stainless, and then with stainless painted in various ways. By the mid-sixties, she had evolved a sculptural vocabulary of strong geometric forms and was experimenting with large-scale sculptures that engaged the space around them.

    In the 1970s Pepper began to create earthbound sculptures and massive cantilevered works. In several series of “totemic” pieces she also explored the possibilities of combining abstraction with mythically evocative primal forms. In 1981, in a sculpture called Moline Markers, she began working single columns into groupings.

    Recently the artist has extended her involvement with the idea of monumentality in a series of “urban altars” composed of archetypal forms. In addition to working in cast and welded steel, Pepper has in recent years fashioned art of concrete, basalt, and the earth itself.

    Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place has been organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. It was made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Itwas also supported by a grant from Knoll International Holdings, Inc.

    The installation at The Brooklyn Museum was coordinated by Charlotta Kotik, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum.

    The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1987, 052-54.
    View Original