Larry Bell b. 1939
-
Overview
photo: douglas friedmanLarry Bell is one of the most renowned and influential artists to emerge from the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s, alongside contemporaries Ed Ruscha and Robert Irwin, and had garnered international repute by the age of 30. Known foremost for his refined surface treatment of glass and explorations of light, reflection and shadow through the material, Bell’s significant oeuvre extends from painting and works on paper to glass sculptures and furniture design. Bell’s understanding of the potential of glass and light allows him to expand visual and physical fields of perception, and his sculptures to surpass traditional bounds of the medium. He has said: ‘Although we tend to think of glass as a window, it is a solid liquid that has at once three distinctive qualities: it reflects light, it absorbs light, and it transmits light all at the same time.’
Bell’s use of commercial industrial processes in his studio, located in Venice, California since the 1960s and Taos, New Mexico since the 1970s, demonstrates his unparalleled skill and dedication in each step of his sculptures’ fabrication. Since 1969, his studio has managed its own high-vacuum coating system that allows him to deposit thin metal films onto his glass surfaces, harnessing a little known technique developed for aeronautics to create an unprecedented body of work. -
Exhibitions
-
Larry Bell + Susanna Fritscher: as Light, as Air
Opening Saturday, July 25, 2026 25 Jul - 29 Aug 2026'As Light, as Air' brings together two artists whose practices share a preoccupation with light, atmosphere, and the threshold between the material and the immaterial. For more than six decades,...Read more -
Mirage
Larry Bell, Ben Dallas, August Muth, Signe Stuart 25 May - 22 Jun 2024Pie Projects is delighted to present Mirage , a group exhibition featuring Larry Bell, Ben Dallas, August Muth, and Signe Stuart. The artworks exhibited in Mirage put in question what...Read more
-
-
Works
Larry Bell b. 1939
R 40, 2008mixed media on
red Hiromi paper
39 x 39 in.Copyright The ArtistProvenance
directly from the Artist's studio
