As a quintessential member of the Light and Space movement—the blend of Minimalism and curiosity about optical perception that germinated among a coterie of West Coast artists in the 1960s—Larry Bell has spent the better part of seven decades rigorously investigating the beguiling properties of glass. But his practice began with an accident.
He’d dropped out of the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he’d enrolled with the goal of becoming a Disney animator, after realizing he was more drawn to fine art. To pay for a studio in Venice Beach, he took a job in a frame shop. There, he learned to cut glass—and began experimenting with its “magical qualities” in his paintings and sculptures. When a piece he was placing in a small shadow box broke in half, he grudgingly decided to finish the artwork anyway, inserting a sheet of blue paper behind the shard.
Untitled Coated SS (Habenaro), 2024, laminated glass coated with inconel and silicon monoxide.
Stefan Wachs
“It was a complete epiphany,” he recalls in his studio in Taos, N.M., wearing one of his trademark jaunty hats and surrounded by some of his collection of 400 guitars, give or take. “The break made three lines: the shadow of the break, the reflection of the break just above that, and the break itself, [all] floating in this blue plane. I was absolutely floored by how beautiful the whole thing was. The epiphany was that life can be that simple, that you can trust your improvisation. I learned so much from that moment that I essentially carried on with that thing until today.”
Forever seeking an element of surprise, he went on to make his name with glass cubes, often coated with thin metallic, oxide, or quartz deposits that he vaporized in his own industrial vacuum tank, subtly altering the way the glass reflects, absorbs, and transmits light. His work will be the subject of two exhibitions in New York in September—in Madison Square Park and at the Judd Foundation—as well as a retrospective that opened August 29 at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Sand Wall 4 Panels, 2025, laminated glass coated with silicon monoxide, chrome, and quartz.
Stefan Wachs
In the park, six monumental pieces, two of them site-specific, will be spread across as many lawns. They include cubes and configurations that resemble deconstructed boxes, the connected walls zigzagging through space in right angles. “The sculptures balance in the weight of their own vertical thrust,” Bell explains. Viewers’ perceptions will change not only with the light of day but also with the seasons, as the objects, which have proved surprisingly immune to the elements, will remain up until March 15.
The Judd show will feature 12 two-dimensional works, all made since the 2024 death of his wife, Janet Webb Bell, whom he describes as a “fantastic mate” for 52 years. “I was in pretty poor shape for a couple of months,” he recalls. “I decided I had to get back to doing something, and this work just fell out of my hands.”
Solar Study 38, 2024, mixed media with aluminum and silicon monoxide, mounted on canvas, which will be in the Judd Foundation show.
Courtesy of Larry Bell; Photo: Desiree Manville
Composed of 100 or more layers of ultrathin film produced in the vacuum tank, the silvery pieces are abstract but reveal a tinge of figuration. “Some of them look like creatures,” he says. “They don’t look like people, but they look like something that’s not inanimate.”
At 85, Bell has discovered another advantage to working in two dimensions. “It’s a lot easier physically, because the glass is heavy and I’m not so strong anymore,” he says with a laugh. “I mean, part of [what I loved about] being a sculptor was grunting heavy shit around. There was a sensuousness to doing those things, but it hurts too much now.”
Bell has enjoyed renewed enthusiasm for his work in recent years—he’s now represented by the powerful Hauser & Wirth gallery—but he experienced a self-imposed lull after decamping from L.A. to Taos in 1973 and quitting the influential Pace gallery. The financial end of the art world scared him, he says, and “wasn’t good for me.”
Untitled Cube, 2023, rosa-tinted glass coated with chrome, silicon monoxide, and titanium with nickel chrome banding (left) and Untitled Cube, 2023, glass coated with chrome and silicon monoxide with black nickel chrome banding (right).
Stefan Wachs
“And so rather than drive up a road where I didn’t know [if] I could control the vehicle, I just parked in a quiet place,” he adds.
He admits to some regrets today but also says that had he not moved to New Mexico, “I probably wouldn’t have survived. There were just too many distractions, whether it was alcohol or drugs or whatever else. I just had a weakness, and this place gave me the strength to carry on.”
As for what guided his artmaking, he cites the most important advice imparted by his friend and mentor Robert Irwin: “Trust myself.”