Larry Bell

American, b. 1939
Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1939 and grew up in Los Angeles, California. From 1957 to 1959, he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now part of CalArts) in Los Angeles, with the intention of becoming a Disney animator. He was a student of artists Robert Irwin, Richards Ruben, Robert Chuey, and Emerson Woelffer, and it was at Chouinard where Bell explored abstract painting. He followed friends like Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Ken Price, and Craig Kauffman to the beach. He found representation at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, together with Edward Ruscha, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston.

1960sThroughout his career Larry Bell has made investigations into the properties of light on surface. By experimenting with the nature of surface and its relationship to space, Bell has devised a methodology characterised by spontaneity, intuition and improvisation.Bell began his career in 1959 and his earliest works consisted of abstract, monochrome paintings on paper and shaped canvases whose outlines corresponded to the silhouette of a box drawn in isometric projection. Panes of glass and then mirrors were substituted for parts of the painted design and this exploration of spatial ambiguity eventually evolved into sculptural constructions made of wood and glass. These works represent the genesis of Bell’s later glass cubes and standing glass-panel wall sculptures. From 1963 onward, Bell began exploring the passing of light through the cube sculptures, deploying a technique of vacuum deposition whereby thin films were added to the clear glass panels. Bell found that these glass cubes, presented on transparent pedestals, offered the viewer the essence of the captured light, becoming, in the process, tapestries of reflected, transmitted and absorbed light. Challenging notions of mass, volume and gravity in one single measure, the cubes appeared to float on the light between the floor and the work.

Sources: wikipedia.com and larrybell.com