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1947 Born Los Angeles, California
EDUCATION
1970 BFA Chouinard Art Institute (California Institute of the Arts), Los Angeles, California
PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE
1972—Echo Park Pottery, Los Angeles, California
1980s Memphis Group
BIOGRAPHY
Peter Shire has worked with a number of media including clay. Shire does not categorize his work into any area working in industrial design, fine art, and crafts.
References to the Bauhaus aesthetic, Italian Futurism, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco appear in his work throughout the years and media.
In the 1980s he became one of the early members of the Milan-based Memphis Group. This collection of artists and designers developed colorful unique designs that Ettore Sottsass called the ‘New International Style’ a reaction to the minimalist designs of the 1970s.
In the 1980s Shire built many of his postmodern teapots. These slab built and cast pieces use stoneware and are glazed with the very bright palette of colors that have become an iconic part of his work regardless of the media. In the 1970s he began painting with glazes on clay tiles. The subjects of these paintings are typically drawn from his Los Angeles neighborhood. He has painted more than 500 of these tiles.
Each year he produces and donates dozens of mugs decorated with spattered ultra-bright color glazes.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Archer M. Huntington Gallery, Austin, Texas
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Berkeley Museum, Berkeley, California
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Colburn Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles, California
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, New York
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, California
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
The Jewish Musesum, New York, New York
Judisches Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Matthew Center Art Collection, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
Museum of Modern Art, Lodz, Poland
Newport Art Museum, Newport Beach, California
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California
Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Oregon
Sak’s Fifth Avenue Corporation, New York, New York
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California
Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Total Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clark, Garth. American Ceramics: 1876 to the Present, revised edition. New York, NY: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1987.
__________and Cindy Strauss. Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary Ceramics: The Garth Clark and Mark DelVecchio Collection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lauria, Jo. Color and Fire, Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics 1950 to 2000. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000.
Perry, Barbara. American Ceramics: The Collection of the Everson Museum of Art. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publishers, 1989.
CV or RESUME: Click Here to Download
Source: Elaine Levin Archive, University of Southern California
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Citation: "The Marks Project." Last modified July 19, 2023. http://www.themarksproject.org:443/marks/shire