Explore the Era

Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.

Ken Price
Artist

Ken Price

Ken Price at a party in Los Angeles in 1965. Image courtesy of Ken Price Studio

Ken Price (1935–2012) was born and raised in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. Price began making ceramics as a student at Santa Monica Community College, yet it was Peter Voulkos, his professor at Otis Art Institute in the late 1950s, who was pivotal to Price’s early development. Like his classmates John Mason and Henry Takemoto, Price experimented with the possibilities of ceramics as a medium, producing large-scale sculptures. Later, he would break away from Voulkos and the Otis studio by experimenting with smaller, eccentric clay forms painted in striking color combinations that had an other-worldly quality. Price was a member of the artistic circle that exhibited at the Ferus Gallery, where he had his first solo exhibition in 1960.

Historic Map Locations

Works of Art

  • Green and Cream

    Green and Cream, 1966, Ken Price. Glazed ceramic. 4 x 8 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. Private collection. Permission courtesy Ken Price Studio. Photo by Zoe Zimmerman

  • BG Red

    BG Red, 1963, Ken Price. Fired clay with acrylic and lacquer on wooden base. 10 in. high. Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Gifford Phillips. Permission courtesy Ken Price Studio. Photo by Taylor Sherill

  • Avocado Mountain

    Avocado Mountain, 1959, Ken Price. Glazed ceramics (2 parts). 24 x 21 x 21 in. James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles. Permission courtesy Ken Price Studio

Explore the Archive

  • Poster for The Studs group exhibition

    Poster for The Studs group exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, 1964. Image courtesy of Hal Glicksman

  • Ken Price's sculptures

    Installation view of Ken Price's sculptures in the exhibition New American Sculpture at the Pasadena Art Museum, February 11–March 7, 1964. Photo by Frank J. Thomas. Courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives

  • Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, and Ken Price

    Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, and Ken Price outside Hotel Caesars in Tijuana, Mexico, 1968. Image courtesy of Larry Bell

  • Ken Price firing works

    Ken Price firing works for his Curio Store at the home of Dennis Hopper in Taos, New Mexico, 1973. Photo by Happy Price. Image courtesy of the Ken Price Studio

  • Ken Price at USC

    Ken Price with student work at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1956. Image courtesy of the Ken Price Studio

  • Los Angeles artists at Culture Day at LACMA, 1968

    Several Los Angeles artists at Culture Day at LACMA (L.A. County Museum of Art), 1968. Photo by and © Julian Wasser.