Larry Bell Biography

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Larry Bell Art

Larry Bell's

work emerged in the mid-1960's, and is often included in major exhibitions of Minimal art. His work was shown in the first exhibit to focus on Minimal art, "Primary Structures", at the Jewish Museum in 1966. Bell's work was also included in the Seminal Museum of Modern Art exhibit, "the Responsive Eye" in 1965. More recently, Bell's work was prominently presented in the Museum of Contemporary Art's show, "A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968", and discussed at the length in the catalogue essays.

Bell is one of the most prominent and influential artists to have come out of the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960's, first showing at the Huysman Gallery, and then at Ferus. He became associated with the most important movements at the time such as Light and Space art and what was described as "Finish Fetish" (a term coined by the late critic John Coplans). Bell has continued to investigate the complexities of highly refined surface treatments of glass, as well as large-scale sculptural installations.

Larry Bell was born in Chicago in 1938, and currently resides in Taos, New Mexico. The artist now maintains studios in Taos, New Mexico and Venice, California. Having grown up in the San Fernando Valley, Bell attended Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles from 1957 through 1959, where he was a student of Robert Irwin. He was extraordinarily successful as a young artist, and showed regularly at Pace Gallery in New York between 1964 and 2005. In September of 2005, Pace Wildenstein presented a show of works titled "Larry Bell: The Sixties".

His work is in public collections throughout the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Art Institute of Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2007 Logan Fine Arts, Houston

2006 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, Annandale Galleries, Sydney

2005 Alan Koppel Gallery, Chicago, McClain Gallery, Houston, Jacobson Howard Gallery, New York, Pace/Wildenstein, New York, Benard Jacobson Gallery, London

2003 St. John's College Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2002 Roswell Museum & Art Center, NM, Kiyo Higashi Gallery, Los Angeles SkoRidder AS, Olso, Norway

2001 Gallery Gan, Tokyo

2000 Larry Bell Annex/New Directions Gallery Center Galleries, Center of Creative Studies, Detroit, MI

1999 Museum Moderner Kunst Landkreis Cuxhaven, Ottendorf, Germany, Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburg, PA

1998 Seljord Art Association, Seljord, Norway, Bergen Kunstmuseum, Bergen, Norway

1997 Reykjavik Municipal Art Museum, Reyjavik, Iceland

1996 Art et Industrie Gallery New York

1995 Indigo Gallery, Boca Raton, FL

1994 New Directions Gallery, Taos, New Mexico, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1993 New Directions Gallery, Taos, New Mexico, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1992 Tampa Museum of Art, Florida, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1991 Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona, New Directions Gallery, Taos, New Mexico

1990 Galerie Montenay, Paris, Galerie Rolf Ricke, Köin, Germany, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1989 Musee d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, New Directions Gallery, Taos, New Mexico, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1988 Gemini Editions Limited, Los Angeles, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1987 Galerie Gilbert Brownstone & Cie, Paris, Kiyo Higashi, Los Angeles

1986 Amarillo (Texas) Art Center, Boise (Idaho) Gallery of Art

1984 Colorado Springs (Colorado) Fine Arts Center

1983 Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska, ARCO Center for Visual Arts, Los Angeles

1982 The Detroit (Michigan) Institute of Arts, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California

1981 The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York

1977 Hayden Gallery, M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts

1975 Fort Worth (Texas) Art Museum

1973 Oakland (California) Museum

1965, '67, '70, '71, '72, '73 Pace Gallery, NYC

1967 Galeria lleana Sonnabend, Paris

1962, '63, '65 Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles