Ken Price (1935 – 2012) is best known for his innovative ceramic sculpture and is recognized as one of the most important sculptors to have emerged in Los Angeles in the 20th century. Throughout his 50+ year career, Price also made extraordinary drawings with watercolor of varied subjects from sculpture studies and still lifes to landscapes and erotic drawings. Ken Price rose to prominence in the early 1960s and was a key player in the explosion of the Los Angeles Contemporary art scene in the 60s.
Born in Los Angeles in 1935, Price grew up near the beach and spent his youth surfing nearly every day. Price began studying art at Santa Monica Collage at the age of 18. He went on to earn a BFA in 1956 from the University of Southern California and took ceramics classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art and Design, where he studied under Peter Voulkos. Price earned an MFA in 1959 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and had his gallery debut at the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles just a year later, at the age of 25. He quickly established himself with several successful solo exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1969.
Ken Price exhibited extensively until his death in 2012, at his home in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, just outside of Taos. That same year a major retrospective of his work, on which he collaborated with friend and architect Frank Gehry, was staged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Works by Price are held in numerous museum collections, among them The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.