Kenneth Price dies at 77; artist transformed traditional ceramics

Source: Los Angeles Times   Kenneth Price was among the first generation of iconoclastic L.A. artists to attain international stature. His work with glazed and painted clay was 'resolutely original' and redefined contemporary sculpture, an observer says. Kenneth Price, a prolific Los Angeles artist whose work with glazed and painted clay transformed traditional ceramics while also expanding orthodox definitions of American and European sculpture, died early Friday at his home and studio in Taos, N.M. He was 77. Price had struggled with tongue and throat cancer for several years, his food intake restricted to liquids supplied through a feeding tube. Despite his infirmity, he continued to produce challenging new work and to mount critically acclaimed exhibitions at galleries in Los Angeles, New York and Europe. At the time of his death Price had completed preparations for a 50-year retrospective, scheduled to open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the fall in an exhibition designed by architect Frank Gehry. The show will travel to the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A 1992 retrospective traveled from the Menil Collection in Houston to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In the decades following World War II, Price was among the first generation of iconoclastic L.A. artists to attain international stature. Three Price sculptures were on view in "Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970," a survey of 47 leading postwar artists that closed this month at theJ. Paul [...]