Beverly Pepper

The artist Beverly Pepper is acclaimed for her monumental outdoor sculptures utilizing industrial materials and tools, such as Cor-Ten steel and cast iron. One of ten artists (including David Smith and Alexander Calder) who were invited by the Italian government to create new works for the Spoleto festival in 1962, where they were given access to materials, tools, and assistants allowing for large-scale sculptures, Pepper began a lifelong engagement with such industrial processes—one of the few female artists of her generation to do so. However, despite the mechanized and industrial associations of her materials, her work is often inspired by organic forms and prehistoric cultures, as in the case of her cast-iron Manhattan Sentinels (1993—1996), an enormous site-specific work in New York's Federal Plaza that takes the form of three massive totems.

Pepper's work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the Georgia Museum of Art (2010), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1991), and the Brooklyn Museum (1987).