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BEVERLY PEPPER ‘DENVER MONOLITHS’ IS INSTALLED AT DENVER ART MUSEUM

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DENVER, COLO. — The directors of Marlborough Gallery announce the installation of Beverly Pepper’s groundbreaking “Denver Monoliths” at the new Frederic Hamilton building of the Denver Art Museum.

The sculpture of two massive vertical elements, one 42 feet tall and the other 31 feet tall, weighs 155,000 pounds and was made using stone casting technologies and modeling techniques new to sculpture.

“Denver Monoliths” was commissioned specifically for placement in front of Daniel Libeskinds’ new addition to the Denver Art Museum by Museum Board Trustee Jana Bartlit and her husband Fred Bartlit. The sculpture, set on a triangle of grass, is sited on the museum’s exterior public plaza directly in front of the main entry.

Pepper spent 1½ years creating “Denver Monoliths,” a sculpture that significantly draws upon her roughhewn stone “Magma Series.” These stone sculptures were first seen in her 1997 solo show at Forte Belvedere, Florence, Italy, followed by an exhibition of stone sculptures at Marlborough Chelsea in 2001.

In the 1960s and 1970s Pepper worked in Cor-ten and stainless steel. In 1981 she was invited to experiment by the John Deere Company, at its foundry, with what was then a relatively new material, cast ductile iron, which she proceeded to pioneer as an artistic medium.

Pepper has worked extensively with public sites, creating numerous environmental works and sculptures in the United States as well as in Europe and Asia, including the “Manhattan Sentinels,” a work created for New York City’s Federal Plaza; “Sol I Ombra,” a 100,000-square-foot park in Barcelona, Spain; and “Teatro Celle,” a sculpture-theater at the Fattoria Celle sculpture park in Pistoia, Italy.

Currently, she is working on a 60-foot fountain, set in a public park of her own design, in Terni, Italy; a sculpture-as-theater for a private sculpture garden in New York State; an earthwork for the Meijer Botanical Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mich.; and a 30-foot-tall sculpture, “Ptolemy’s Wedge,” for the Cesar Pelli-designed Minneapolis Central Public, Minnesota. Pepper lives and works in Todi, Italy, and New York.

For information, 212-541-4900.