Main / South / Office Galleries
May 30 - August 12, 2025
DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD
New Sculptures
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Deborah Butterfield is a renowned American sculptor celebrated for her poignant depictions of horses crafted from natural and reclaimed materials. Her lifelong passion for horses began in childhood and became the central theme of her career. Initially, Butterfield created life-sized forms using mud, clay, and sticks. By the late 1970s, she transitioned to working with scrap metal and found steel, and later began casting her wooden assemblages in bronze, preserving the texture and form of the original materials.
Butterfield earned her BA (1972) and MFA (1973) from UC Davis, studying under influential artists such as Robert Arneson and Manuel Neri. Her work is included in major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has exhibited extensively across the United States and internationally. Most notably, Deborah Butterfield: P.S. These Are Not Horses, a retrospective at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis (2023–2024), celebrated her more than 50-year career and enduring artistic legacy. In 2022, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, recognizing her significant contributions to contemporary sculpture. Over the course of her career, Butterfield has also been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple National Endowment for the Arts grants. Butterfield’s sculptures offer more than realistic portrayals—they serve as quiet, powerful reflections of human emotion and experience. Each work conveys a sense of calm, strength, and contemplation that captures the spirit of the animal and a deeper feeling of presence and memory. Her intuitive use of reclaimed materials expands the emotional and expressive range of contemporary sculpture. |
Deborah Butterfield - Red Cloud, 2023, cast bronze with patina, 79 x 78 x 40 in.
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Deborah Butterfield - Incandescent, 2024, cast bronze with patina, 83 x 96 x 47 in.
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Deborah Butterfield - Spirit Lake, 2024, cast bronze with patina, 79 x 78 x 40 in.
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Deborah Butterfield - Escarza, 2024, cast bronze with patina, 41½ x 46 x 15 in.
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Deborah Butterfield - Orbit, 2024, cast bronze with patina, 28½ x 32½ x 8½ in.
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Deborah Butterfield - 'Ano 'Ano, 2024, cast bronze with patina, 26 x 31 x 10 in.
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Deborah Butterfield - Hapai, 2021, cast bronze with patina, 31 x 38 x 10½ in.
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Deborah Butterfield - Kalima, 2021, cast bronze with patina, 32 x 31 x 15 in.
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