Dimensions: 37" L x 25" H
 
Born in Dodge City, Kansas, Billy Al Bengston became a part of the 1960s California Pop-Art movement and pioneered the use of industrial and spray paint techniques in his fine art painting. He combined this method with symmetrical formal images in centralized composition. He became known for work that created stunning, dazzling optical effects. Bengston moved to California in 1948 with his family and associated with sculptor Kenneth Price, painter Richard Diebenkorn, and ceramist Peter Voulkos. These California artists were forging their own path, seemingly oblivious to any thing going on in New York. Few museums welcomed their work, and so they banded together and did their own exhibitions. Bengston had his first one-man show at age 24 at Walter Hopps' Ferus Gallery, a mecca for young artists in Los Angeles, and won instant acclaim, and he first showed his chevron paintings in 1962 at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. With his innovative work, flamboyant attire, and deadpan wit, Bengston was a central figure of the "L.A. Cool School." The group which included Ed Ruscha, Kenneth Price, Robert Irwin, Edward Kienholz, and Larry Bell became a cradle of 1960s counterculture and drew international created a swashbuckling art scene that attention, propelling L.A. to world prominence as a city of art.