21 Facts About Kenneth Price

Kenneth Price was an American artist who predominantly created ceramic sculpture.

Kenneth Price studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956.

Kenneth Price continued his studies at Chouinard Art Institute in 1957 and received an MFA degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1959.

Kenneth Price studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos at Otis and was awarded a Tamarind Fellowship.

Kenneth Price is best known for his abstract shapes constructed from fired clay.

Kenneth Price was born February 16,1935, and raised in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.

In 1949, Kenneth Price began at University High School, at which time he took up surfing.

In 1952 while at University High, Price received a scholarship to attend Chouinard Art Institute, where he took classes in life drawing and cartooning taught by T Hee.

Kenneth Price enrolled in his first art ceramics course at Santa Monica City College in 1954, where he quickly embraced a formal craft tradition as espoused by Marguerite Wildenhain.

Kenneth Price subsequently studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956.

Kenneth Price has often cited Voulkos as his strongest single influence as a student.

In 1958, Kenneth Price left Otis for Alfred University.

In 1959, Kenneth Price returned to Los Angeles having received an MFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

Kenneth Price would have three solo shows during the short time Ferus was open, and by the mid-1960s Kenneth Price was a fixture in the west coast art scene.

The technique Kenneth Price began to develop during this period involved priming the fired ceramic sculpture with more than a dozen layers of acrylic paint.

Kenneth Price becomes a professor of ceramics at USC where he teaches for 10 years.

Kenneth Price was known to apply as many as a hundred layers of paint to a piece, in up to seven different colors.

In 2011 Kenneth Price was awarded the USC Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ken Kenneth Price died on February 24,2012, at his home in Taos, New Mexico.

In September 2012, Kenneth Price was the subject of a 50-year retrospective opening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and traveling to the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kenneth Price's work is held in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.