Bruce Beasley was a Visiting Artist who participated in a conversation at the Arts Research Center on Feburary 24, 2015.
Bruce Beasley was born in Los Angeles in 1939. A typical hot rod loving teen raised in West Los Angeles, he graduated from University High School then headed for Dartmouth as a Freshman to study rocket engineering. After taking one of the few art classes Dartmouth offered, Beasley knew that his calling was art. He transferred to the University of California, Berkeley to study sculpture, and while still an undergrad, Beasley’s very early work titled Tree House, from the Cast Iron series, was selected for inclusion in the influential exhibition, The Art of Assemblage (1961), at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), alongside art historical names such as Duchamp and Picasso.
That was the beginning of a relentless trajectory that has included six decades of international critical recognition, over 200 international exhibitions, and 1000’s of publications. Beasley’s substantial and varied body of work has been exhibited and collected by leading institutions all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, NY; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, to name a few.
Beasley’s Apolymon is permanently installed in the California state capital; his public works can be found in sculpture parks, corporations, airports and universities globally. In 2005, the first retrospective exhibition of Beasley’s work was held at the Oakland Museum of California. In 2008, Beasley’s 17-by-17 foot stainless steel Gathering of the Moons was selected for the Beijing Olympic Games. And in 2021-2022 Beasley became the subject of a second major career overview, Bruce Beasley: Sixty Year Retrospective, 1960-2020, installed at Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey and showcasing 62 of Beasley’s most important indoor and outdoor works.
Throughout his career, Beasley experimented with and continues to explore various sculptural media, ranging from cast aluminum to Lucite to bronze to granite to wood. His abstract language of form has ranged from rectilinear shapes in the cubic works of the 80s and 90s, to the lyrical, undulating organic forms of the Rondo and Torqueri Series. His most recent works include collage-on-canvas gestural abstractions and sculptures inspired by experiments in virtual reality.
While inventing and exploring new technologies, Beasley uses these tools only as they allow him to achieve his aesthetic explorations. His innovations in material science have included contributing to the development of the first studio-scale 3D printer and solving large-scale casting in acrylic, which has been adapted by the United States Navy for deep sea exploration. The artist is also a committed social advocate, founding the South Prescott Neighborhood Association to substantially impact community development in the historically neglected West Oakland area. Today he interfaces with government, home owner and homeless stake holders in West Oakland to find solutions to serious urban housing crises.