Deborah Butterfield

“I was a fanatic about horses before I could talk.” — Deborah Butterfield

L.A. Louver is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Deborah Butterfield’s cast bronze and found steel sculptures. Both small scale and larger-than-life size works will be included in the exhibition, which will be presented in both first and second floor galleries.

Deborah Butterfield has explored the subject of horses for over thirty years. In her early sculpture, the artist employed humble materials such as mud, clay and sticks. With her move to a large farm in Montana in 1979, Butterfield’s work went through a major evolution. The horse ranch gave the artist space to create large-scale sculpture, and the freedom to experiment with different materials. Butterfield pursued a dematerialization of form, and began working with scrap metal, a material that she continues to use. More recently, an exploration of materials has led the artist to cast her wood sculptures in bronze, and to develop sophisticated patinas. To make the bronzes, Butterfield first twists found wood and sticks into the horse forms, binding the pieces together with wire. The wood is disassembled and the bronze cast from the wood itself, which is burned out in the casting process. The cast bronze pieces are then forged together, to replicate the original wood sculpture. At the final stage, Butterfield applies patina to the bronze, conveying with astonishing nuance the texture and color of the original wood.

The Montana ranch continues to provide the artist with the opportunity to train and ride horses year round. Living in close proximity to her subject enables Butterfield to establish an intimate knowledge and communication with the horses, and helps her to instill in each sculpture an essence of their different mind, body and attitude. Each form depicts the subject’s interior life. Butterfield has stated that the horse is a tabula rasa – a blank image: “Essentially it is myself, but it has also become other people.” The horses are depicted standing, but at rest, and possess a grand, noble spirit, infused with the artist’s understanding and knowledge of her subject.

Born and raised in San Diego, Deborah Butterfield studied at the University of California, Davis and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, Butterfield taught sculpture at the University of Madison, Wisconsin and Montana State University, Bozeman. Since 1976, the artist has exhibited extensively. Important solo shows include the Israel Museum, 1981; Dallas Museum of Arts and Seattle Museum, 1982; Oakland Museum, California, 1983; Contemporary Art Center, Honolulu, 1986; Denver Art Museum, 1989; University of Miami, 1992 and Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, 2003 - 2004 (traveled to the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach).

Commissions include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA, California. Works are also represented in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Cincinnati Museum, Ohio; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Diego Museum of Art, California; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. L.A. Louver is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Validated parking is available in the garage directly opposite the gallery.

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Deborah Butterfield