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1938Born Garden Grove, California
2008Died Eagle Rock, California
EDUCATION
1961BFA Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, California
PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE
1961-1964Faculty, Ceramics Department, Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, California
1963-1972Chairman, Ceramics Department, Chouinard Art Institute
1983-1997Faculty and Chairman Ceramics Department, Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, California
BIOGRAPHY
Ralph Bacerra is known as one of the leading decorative ceramists of the 20th century. His work shows the influences of Asian art, especially Imari porcelain, and of 20th– and 21st–century abstract artists like M.C. Escher. Bacerra was one of the first American studio potters to create highly decorative surfaces using enamels and lusters, incising into the clay body, and over glaze china paint.
The vivid colors and contrasts of his characteristic glazes are then built up using up to ten separate firings, each firing in succession at a lower temperature than the previous. The rich jewel colors in complex patterns that appear on his works are the result of multiple controlled firings. Bacerra often started with an unglazed geometric vessel created using various thrown, hand-built, and cast components.
Bacerra was Chairperson of the Ceramics Department at Chouinard Institute from 1963 until the department was dissolved in 1971. He returned to teaching in 1983 at the Otis Art Institute, where he became Chairperson of the Ceramics Department, a position he held until 1997.
Bacerra once stated, “My pieces are based on traditional ideas and engage in certain cultural appropriations—in form, in design, in glaze choices. However, my work is not postmodern in the sense that I am not making any statements—social, political, conceptual or even intellectual. There is no meaning or metaphor. I am committed more to the idea of pure beauty. When it is finished, the piece should be like an ornament, exquisitely beautiful.”
An interview with Ralph Bacerra conducted April 12 and 19, 2004 by Frank Lloyd, for the Archives of American Art’s Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America is available at:
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-ralph-bacerra-12942.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, California
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona
Bates Gallery, Edinboro University, Edinboro, Pennsylvania
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, New York
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, New York
Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedelia, Missouri
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, Utah
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California
Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
Newark Museum of Art, Newark, New Jersey
Northern Illinois Art Museum, DeKalb, Illinois
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California
Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
Sacramento State College, Sacramento, California
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
White House Collection, the Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock, Arkansas
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bacerra, Ralph. Ralph Bacerra: A Survey. New York, NY: Garth Clark Gallery, 1999.
Clark, Garth, and Tony Cunha. The Artful Teapot. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill, 2001.
Lauria, Jo. "A Profile of Artist Ralph Bacerra.” Ceramics: Art and Perception 15 (1994).
Lynn, Martha Drexler. Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists and Their World. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Chronicle Books, 1990.
Ostermann, Matthias. The Ceramic Surface. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Peterson, Susan. Contemporary Ceramics. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill, 2000.
CV or RESUME: Click Here to Download
Source: Elaine Levin Archive, University of Southern California
CV or RESUME: Click Here to Download
Source: Frank Lloyd Gallery, Elaine Levin Archive, University of Southern California
CV or RESUME: Click Here to Download
Source: Garth Clark Gallery, Elaine Levin Archive, University of Southern California
Bacerra was diligent in signing his ceramic pieces on the reverse with his signature, but often did not include the date... frequently works created between 1961 and 1963, when Bacerra was a student at Chouinard Art Institute, works were signed RALPH in script. All known works after 1963, when Bacerra became faculty at Chouinard, were signed BACERRA in script. (Jo Lauria 2016)
Citation: "The Marks Project." Last modified February 12, 2024. http://www.themarksproject.org/marks/bacerra