DeWain Valentine

[1] Valentine worked in boat shops and began to make art pieces from plastic, which he tried unsuccessfully to show in New York City.

[3] Attracted by the work of artists such as Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, and Kenneth Price, which he learned about by reading the magazine Artforum, Valentine moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and had his first solo show at the Ace Gallery in 1968.

[4] Influenced by the seascapes and skies of Southern California, Valentine was an early pioneer of using industrial plastics and resin to produce monumental sculptures that reflect and distort the light and space that surround them.

He began working with a chemical engineer from PPG Industries Ed Revay, and eventually they discovered the Valentine MasKast Resin in 1966.

This piece, along with his other tall columns, carries his illusory structure, managing to change in opaqueness and transparency depending on the angle it is being viewed at.

[12] In October 2011, Valentine’s Circle, a robin’s egg blue resin disk only 17 inches in diameter, sold at L.A. Modern Auctions for $32,500, a record for the artist and well over six times the high estimate of $5,000.