Peter Voulkos

Voulkos worked between 1924 and 2002 across ceramicist, painter, sculptor and artist. This article rests on 5 published texts and 9 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

Peter Voulkos studied at Montana State University and California College of the Arts. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is ceramic. Employment is recorded with Black Mountain College. Work by Peter Voulkos is recorded in the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, National Gallery of Victoria and Cleveland Museum of Art. Distinctions recorded are Gold Medal for Consummate Craftsmanship, Fellow of the American Craft Council and Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Peter Voulkos • Birth Name — Panagiotis Voulkos • Born — 29 January 1924 • Birthplace — Bozeman, Montana, US • Died — 16 February 2002 • Place of death — Bowling Green, Ohio, US • Field — Ceramic art, Sculpture • Training — * Montana State University (BFA) • California College of the Arts (MFA) • Movement — Abstract expressionist

• Illustration — Peter Voulkos and Peter Callas working on a 1998 Stack in Belvidere, NJ. • Illustration — John Balistreri assisting Peter Voulkos.

Peter Voulkos was born the third of five children to Greek immigrant parents, Aristovoulos I. Voulkopoulos, anglicized and shortened to Harry (Aris) John Voulkos and Effrosyni (Efrosine) Peter Voulalas. After high school, he worked as a molder's apprentice at a ship's foundry in Portland. In 1943, Peter Voulkos was drafted into the United States Army during the Second World War, serving as an airplane gunner in the Pacific.

Voulkos studied painting and printmaking at Montana State College, in Bozeman (now Montana State University), where he was introduced to ceramics (Frances Senska, who established the ceramics arts program, was his teacher). Ceramics quickly became a passion. His 25 pounds of clay allowed by semester by the school was not enough, but he noticed a source of good quality clay from the tires of the trucks that would stop at the restaurant where he worked part-time. He earned his MFA in ceramics from California College of the Arts and Crafts, in Oakland. Afterwards, he returned to Bozeman, and began his career in a pottery business with classmate Rudy Autio, producing functional dinnerware. In 1951 Voulkos and Autio became the first resident artists at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, in Helena, Montana. It is from his time as Resident Director (1951-1954) that the lineage of his mature work, later in full bloom during his tenure at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, can be traced. In 1953, Voulkos was invited to teach a summer session ceramics course at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. After the summer at Black Mountain, he changed his approach to creating ceramics. The artist eschewed his traditional training and instead of creating smooth, well-thrown glazed vessels he started to work gesturally with raw clay, frequently marring his work with gashes and punctures. In 1954, after founding the art ceramics department at the Otis College of Art and Design, called the Los Angeles County Art Institute, his work rapidly became abstract and sculptural. In 1959, he presented for the first time his heavy ceramics during the exhibition at the Landau Gallery in Los Angeles. This created a seismic reaction in the ceramics world, both for the grotesquerie of the sculptures' shapes and the genius marriage of arts and craft, and accelerated his transfer to UC Berkeley.

He moved to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959, where he also founded the ceramics program, which grew into the Department of Design. In the early 1960s, he set up a bronze foundry off-campus, anticipating the metal cast Wurster Hall, and started exhibiting his work at the New York Museum of Modern Art. He became a full professor there in 1967, and continued to teach until 1985. Among his students were many ceramic artists who became well known in their own right. In 1984, Voulkos was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts. At a New York auction in 2001, a 1986 sculpture by Peter Voulkos was sold $72,625 to a European museum. He died of a heart attack on February 16, 2002, after conducting a college ceramics workshop at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, demonstrating his skill to a live audience.

• Illustration — Peter Voulkos, "Vase", stoneware sculpture, Craftsmanship in a Changing World (1956)

Voulkos is survived by his first wife, Margaret Cone, and their daughter, Pier, a polymer clay artist; his wife, Ann, and their son, Aris; and his brother and two sisters. In the early 1980s, Peter Voulkos went to rehab to deal with alcohol and cocaine addiction.

Peter Voulkos is recorded with the occupation ceramicist. Established in Library of Congress under n87837033. Established in RKDartists under 98296. Established in FAST under 1483290. Recorded as having received Gold Medal for Consummate Craftsmanship, Fellow of the American Craft Council and Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Illustration — Standing form, 1957-58, Victoria and Albert Museum • Illustration — Pinatubo, 1994, Victoria and Albert Museum • Illustration — Plate, 1977, Victoria and Albert Museum