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Craig Kauffman (1932-2010) was an artist internationally recognized for his sensuous use of color and new materials. Often cited as a seminal figure in the Los Angeles art world during the 1950s and 1960s, Kauffman first rose to the attention of critics and collectors with his first major one-man show of paintings at Felix Landau Gallery in 1953.Even at the age of 19, his work was very favorably reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, when he exhibited works inspired by Paul Klee at Felix Landau in 1951 in a group show. His paintings, distinctive for their open sense of space and sensuous use of line, were also included landmark early Los Angeles exhibits such as Action I, held at the Merry-Go-Round Building on the Santa Monica Pier, which he co-organized with curator Walter Hopps and James Newman. Kauffman was one of the original members of the legendary Ferus Gallery, and participated in the opening show, Objects on the New Landscape Demanding of the Eye. Kauffman also had a solo show at Ferus, in June of 1958, which was regarded by critics and his peers as a major and influential exhibition of painting.
However, it was Kauffman’s wall relief sculpture in the medium of acrylic plastic that gained him international attention and fame. During the early 1960s, the artist began to experiment with painting on glass, having been influenced by seeing Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even at the Pasadena Art Museum during a 1962 retrospective organized by his friend Hopps. The fragility of the glass was frustrating for Kauffman, and he investigated the use of a new medium, acrylic plastic. After an initial group of works with flat plastic, Kauffman discovered the industrial process of vacuum forming, and proceeded to translate his sensuous forms to wall reliefs, painted on the reverse with sprayed acrylic lacquer. The works were shown first at Ferus, and subsequently picked up by Pace Gallery in New York, where they were very favorably received. By the summer of 1966, Kauffman’s’ acrylic plastic wall relief paintings were featured on the cover of Art in America.
Kauffman continued to exhibit at Pace in New York, and by 1967 his work had been acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the time, the use of industrial materials and a reductive methodology was embraced by many mainstream artists. In what the artist considered to be the most accurate curatorial statement about his work, historian and critic Barbara Rose included Kauffman’s work in A New Aesthetic at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, along with seminal Minimal artists Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Kauffman’s colleagues Larry Bell, Ron Davis and John McCracken. As Barbara Rose noted in her catalogue essay, “Shaping the brittle sheet plastic into a series of voluptuous curves, Kauffman achieves a kind of abstract eroticism that is purely visual.”
Craig Kauffman’s works were subsequently acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (a 1969 acquisition by curator Kynaston McShine), the Tate Modern in London, the Chicago Art Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOCA, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and over 20 other major institutions throughout the world. Kauffman’s work had a significant place in the history of late 20th century art, and is regularly included in surveys of art from the 1960s, as well as exhibits about Los Angeles art.
Although he is often associated with movements in Los Angeles art, his work was always informed by a broad historical knowledge of European painting and Asian art. Often working in series, Kauffman continued to explore unorthodox supports for painting during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Using materials ranging from fiberglass to silk, Kauffman always maintained a sensuous, high-key use of color. During a six decade career, he has continued to exhibit both in the U. S. and abroad, and most recently in Los Angeles at the Frank Lloyd Gallery. Reviewing the show for the Los Angeles Times, critic Christopher Knight wrote, “At Frank Lloyd Gallery, a show of recent, painted wall reliefs by Craig Kauffman continues to explore a trajectory begun by the artist more than 40 years ago….but it's the group of four, strangely glamorous wall flowers that captivate.”
Born in Los Angeles on March 31, 1932, Robert Craig Kauffman was the son of Superior Court Judge Kurtz Kauffman. He was a childhood friend and classmate of Walter Hopps, and graduated from Eagle Rock High School in 1950. He enrolled in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, but transferred to Department of Art at UCLA in 1952, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1955 and Master of Fine Arts in 1956. Kauffman traveled and lived in Paris and New York during subsequent years, and also taught painting at the University of California from 1967 to the early 1990s. He subsequently took up residence in the Philippines, where he continued to work in a home and studio that he designed until his passing on May 9, 2010.
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Museum Collections
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Fredrick R. Weisman Collection, Los Angeles, California
Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, California
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, Californi
Oakland Museum of Modern Art, Oakland, California
Orange County Museum of Art, Newport, California
Philip Morris Foundation
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
The Tate Gallery, London, England
University of New Mexico Art Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2010 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2009 Wall Relief Sculpture From the Sixties, Nyehaus, New York, New York
2008 Craig Kauffman: A Drawing Retrospective, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena,
California
New Wall Relief Sculpture, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2007 Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2004 Craig Kauffman: Works from 1960’s, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York
2001 Sandra Gering Gallery, New York
1999 Bubbles, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1998 Painted Drawings, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1995 New Work, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1992 The Works Gallery South, Costa Mesa, California
1990 The Works Gallery South, Costa Mesa, California
1988 The Works Gallery, Long Beach, California
Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Craig Kauffman: Wall Reliefs, 1967-69, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts
Forum, Santa Barbara, California
1987 Craig Kauffman: Wall Reliefs, 1967-69, Whitney Museum of American Art, New
York
1985 Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, California
1983 Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Craig Kauffman, Faith and Charity in Hope Gallery, Hope, Idaho
1982 Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
Blum Helman Gallery, New York
Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1981 Craig Kauffman: A Comprehensive Exhibition, 1957-1980, organized by the La
Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art; traveled to the Elvehjem Museum of Art,
Madison; the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University,
Richmond; and the Oakland Museum (1982)
Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1979 Grapestake Gallery, San Francisco, California
Janus Gallery, Venice, California
Blum Helman Gallery, New York
1978 Arco Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles, California
1976 Comsky Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1976 Robert Elkon Gallery, New York
Galerie Dorthea Speyer, Paris, France
1975 Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles
1972 Galerie Dorthea Speyer, Paris, France
Pace Gallery, New York
Irving Blum Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1970 Pasadena Art Museum, California, traveled to the University of California, Irvine
Pace Gallery, New York
1969 Irving Blum Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Pace Gallery, New York
1967 Ferus/Pace Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Pace Gallery, New York
1965 Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1962 Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, California
1960 Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, California
1958 Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, California
1953 Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles, California
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