Post War & Contemporary Ceramics 
19 February 2025
Post War & Contemporary Ceramics 
129

Peter Voulkos 1924–2002

Bulerias Scratch

1958
stoneware, brushed slip 25 h × 17 w × 8 d in (63 × 43 × 20 cm)
estimate: $15,000–20,000
result: $48,260
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Rago/Wright would like to thank Sam Jornlin at the Voulkos & Co. catalog project for her assistance in cataloging this lot.
Slip signature and date to underside ‘Voulkos 7.58’. This work is registered in the Voulkos and Co. catalog.
provenance: Private Collection, North Carolina
exhibited: XX Ceramic International, 26 October- 7 December 1958, Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Syracuse, NY (traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Currier Museum of Art, New Hampshire, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Grand Rapids Gallery of Art, Michigan)
literature: “Showtime: The Ceramic International: Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Syracuse Show,” Ceramics Monthly, December 1958, pg. 21 illustrates this example
A related form, made in the same year, is held in the permanent collection of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art.

This work will preview in New York and ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

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Rhythm and Clay

An Important Work by Peter Voulkos

By the late 1950s, Peter Voulkos’s work had fully embraced Abstract Expressionism, marking a decisive departure from functional pottery and redefining the possibilities of ceramic art. During this brief yet transformative period, he created some of his most celebrated sculptures—Black Butte Divide, Little Black, Soleares, Rondena, Flying Black, and Black Bulerias, the last of which Phillips sold in 2020 for a record $1,264,200. The present lot, Bulerias Scratch (previously listed as a “lost” work in the Voulkos & Co. catalog), was made in 1958, the same year as these landmark works.

“Clay is like music—you have to know all the structure and know how to make sound before you can come up with anything.”

Just a few years before this artistic breakthrough, Voulkos studied classical guitar in Los Angeles under Theodore Norman, practicing up to five hours a day. Eventually, at Norman’s urging, he was forced to choose between clay and music. Though he chose clay, his passion for music—particularly flamenco—remained deeply ingrained. He often likened ceramics to music, once saying, “Clay is like music—you have to know all the structure and know how to make sound before you can come up with anything.” In the 1980s, he would pick up the guitar again, focusing on his first love, flamenco.

Like Soleares, Rondena, and Black Bulerias, Bulerias Scratch draws its title from flamenco guitar music, specifically the bulería, a fast-paced dance known for its dynamic rhythm, clapping, and intricate footwork. The addition of “scratch”likely alludes to a guitar technique where the player lightly touches the strings while strumming, producing a percussive, textured sound. These influences are evident in the sculpture’s dynamic surface, where bold protrusions and incisions create a sense of rhythmic movement and restless energy—an echo of the music that so profoundly shaped Voulkos’s artistic vision.

Sources

Peter Voulkos: Information, Resistance, Confrontation by Abby Wasserman

Some evenings I create art. Sometimes I search art out. Sometimes I run into it accidentally.

Peter Voulkos

Peter Voulkos 1924–2002

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Few artists can revolutionize an ancient medium, but Peter Voulkos did just that when he brought ceramics into the realm of fine art starting in the late 1950s. Born in Bozeman, Montana in 1924, he studied painting and ceramics at Montana State University and later received his MFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland. While Voulkos began his career by creating utilitarian objects such as bowls and vases that won him wide renown, he began to contemplate abstraction and other fine art principles when he spent the summer of 1953 teaching at Black Mountain College, there he met Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Josef Albers. From there, he visited New York, meeting many of the Abstract Expressionists.

Voulkos returned to California to teach at Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) from 1954 to 1959 and it was in this period that his works really began to evolve. As the decade came to a close, Voulkos moved away from creating functional items, instead morphing vase-like structures into sculpture. He slashed the clay in certain instances and aggressively applied paint to the forms like canvas. No longer content to create works that hid their process of creation, Voulkos made the very act of creation paramount to the understanding and appreciation of his work, much like the Abstract Expressionists that he had associated with.

Voulkos’ artistic output piqued the interest of Peter Selz, the Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1960, he invited Voulkos to exhibit six of his paintings alongside a number of his sculptures as part of the New Talent series, one man exhibitions that the museum had been offering since 1950 to artists who had not yet had solo exhibitions in New York. Voulkos used this opportunity to illustrate the connection between painting, the classic example of fine-art, and ceramics. After his show at MoMA, the artist spent the summers of 1960-1962, and 1964 in New York teaching and creating work at the famed Greenwich House Pottery and Columbia University.

Peter Voulkos brought ceramics into the realm of fine art. He died in 2002, but his legacy is remembered in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Auction Results Peter Voulkos

Peter Voulkos

Untitled (Stack)

estimate: $175,000–225,000

result: $400,000

Peter Voulkos

Snake River

estimate: $50,000–70,000

result: $250,000

Peter Voulkos

Important and Rare Stack

estimate: $190,000–240,000

result: $200,000

Peter Voulkos

Untitled (Stack)

estimate: $100,000–150,000

result: $168,750

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