Ken Price

Relentlessly innovative, American artist Ken Price is renowned for his distinctive approach to ceramics, subverting the material into inventive forms. Born in 1935 in Los Angeles, Price attened the Chouinard Art Institute, the University of Southern California and the Otis Art Institute, where he was influenced by the work of ceramicist Peter Voulkos. Price’s exploration of ceramics challenged the traditional boundaries of the medium, elevating it to the level of fine art and earning him recognition as a pivotal figure in the Los Angeles art scene.

Price gained prominence in the 1960s with his unique, brightly coloured forms that defied the typical conventions of ceramic art. The use of colour in his works seems to be imbued with physicality, a sense of autonomy that moulds the form.

A great example of Price’s interrogation of form and surface is M. Green (1961). The organic form is distinguished by its lustrous surface and startling emerald green and verdant hues. The sculpture exemplifies Price’s unique practice that could not be easily categorised, existing in a continuum between Pop art, Surrealism and conceptual art. In 2023, M. Green sold at Christie’s in New York for US$554,400, establishing a world auction record for the artist.

Through his five-decade career, Price has exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. In 2012, shortly after his death at the age of 77, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presented a retrospective of his work, which travelled to the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.