Peter Alexander, West Coast Light and Space Artist, Dies at 81

Peter Alexander, a key figure in the West Coast Light and Space movement, died at age 81, as confirmed by Parrasch Heijnen Gallery in Los Angeles. His minimal sculptures, often cast in single-color urethane resin from day-glo palettes, include works like the semi-transparent block 3/27/17 (Brilliant Blue Lectern) (2017) mounted on a plinth. Other pieces feature wall-mounted or free-standing forms, such as the seven-panel Indio (2015) with parallel urethane bars and the Needle series resembling luminous stalagmites. While dedicated to sculpture in recent decades—a return to his late-1960s style—Alexander created glitter-and-collage paintings on unstretched black velvet in the 1970s. In 2003, he painted a vast mural for Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. His career included a 1990 retrospective at the Orange County Museum of Art and participation in three 2011 exhibitions for the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time. Awards include a 1980 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the 2014 California Art Award. Alexander's work is held in major collections, including the Broad Foundation in Los Angeles; Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and New York institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art.