For more than 50 years Bruce Beasley has maintained a singular focus on the pursuit of pure, essential form. He burst into the art world at the height of the Abstract Sculpture movement in 1962 with the sale of his first sculpture to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. 1963 was also a banner year during which the Guggenheim acquired Prometheus, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art added Daedalus to its permanent collection and Beasley won the Paris Biennale Purchase Prize for his sculpture Icarus.

On the heels of his initial success, Beasley constructed his studio in West Oakland. Over time, the compound grew to encompass several acres of land, multiple fabrication studios, a home for his family, and is the site of the future Bruce Beasley Sculpture Center of the Oakland Museum of California. As the arc of his career expanded, so too did the scope of his facilities and his appetite for innovation, both artistically and technologically. Beasley analyzes form with scientific precision, yet his approach to sculpture is imbued with the passion he feels for his craft. Though thousands of Beasley studies exist only a fraction are realized into sculptures. These works transcend cultural, linguistic, and spatial boundaries and without compromise, uphold the aesthetic principles Beasley champions.

In 1968 Bruce was awarded the first Art in Public Places commission within the State of California. The seminal work created was Apolymon; a monumental cast acrylic sculpture that exhibited a confluence of form, material, and technology. The ground-breaking fabrication process Beasley invented to craft Apolymon and other significant sculptures also lent itself to important scientific breakthroughs. Beasley was able to cast monumental bathyspheres which were used in deep sea explorations by a myriad of scientists. To date the bathysphere continues to be used by scientists in gathering important deep sea data.

Between 1977 and 1994 Beasley turned his focus to increasingly monumental works in aluminum, stainless steel, and bronze. During this period, Beasley participated in 17 solo and 56 group exhibitions, and produced significant commissions for institutions in both the U.S. and abroad. A few highlights include “The California Sculpture Show”, “Monumenta 19th Sculpture Biennale” and commissions for the San Francisco International Airport, the Miami International Airport, Stanford University, the State of Alaska, and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. This period of significant artistic exploration was fueled through Beasley’s interest in digital technology that enabled him to design ever more complex sculpture. Synchronicity of vision and technology fueled the imagination and possibilities of Beasley’s work, stretching the arm of his aesthetic vocabularies while still paying homage to their modern roots.

During the most recent two decades Beasley was featured in 29 solo exhibitions , 39 group exhibitions, and realized commissions for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai World Expo, the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, the City of Oakland, the City of Monterrey, Mexico; and the Universities of Miami and Oregon. He is currently engaged in monumental commissions for the City of Freemont, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, and the City of Albany, CA.

Through unwavering, disciplined consideration, Beasley developed a body of work that pushes the extents of what the human mind can pre-visualize, never accepting limits on his sculptural explorations; “no” simply ceases to exist within the bounds of Beasley’s artistic, technological and scientific endeavors. The arc of his lifelong pursuit of sculpture has yielded a rich exploration of form. Though defined as “modern”, Beasley’s sculpture straddles the time/space/aesthetic continuum embodying sensibilities of classical, innovative, and timeless importance. Sculpture is what Beasley does; purely and passionately, he has explored the thread of his internal vision from every angle. With a pragmatic, linear approach he has never wavered or slowed from the art form which inspires him. It is the essence of his being, his joy, and his engagement with life and the world around him.