Beverly Pepper

Dec 22, 1922

Beverly Pepper is a modern sculptor, and abstract painter.

She was born Beverly Stoll on December 20, 1922, in New York City, and educated at the Pratt Institute (from 1940) and the Art Students League of New York. Beverly Pepper started her career as a commercial artist in New York before shifting to painting and sculpture. She later studied in Paris (from 1949) with Fernand Léger and Andre Lhote, and from 1951 lived in or near Rome. From 1960 she shifted from painting to carving in wood and working in clay and bronze, and the following year began welding. She is known for totem figures, steel sculptures, mirrored works, and environmental earth constructions, as in her "Amphisculpture" series (1947–76). She has exhibited internationally, including solo shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Ohio's Columbus Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Since 1951 she has divided her time between homes and studios in New York and Todi, Italy.