Brad Howe

An all-in-compassing book devoted to the leading Californian contemporary artist.

Brad Howe, born in 1959 in Riverside, California, started his career in Brazil, after studying history in Sao Paolo. Recognized as a leading contemporary California artist and sculptor, he is best known for his large-scale public and private works employing solid materials such as steel and aluminum, juxtaposed with vibrant colors and shape. Howe's exuberant and pervasive work is grounded in a unique thought-provoking philosophy and vision, with themes that are cyclical throughout his career. From the start, Howe has always taken his calling as an abstract artist, seeking poetry and unpredictable formulations. The interplay of his lyrical shapes and color are his signature to his work, sometimes vibrant and joyful with references to Calder, Miro, and Frank Stella, however also exploring more subtle and restrained interpretations, with influences pointing to Brancusi, Arp, David Smith and Ellsworth Kelly. For Howe, the three-dimensional form is like a dance of atoms, with the kinesis of shape, space, and the joyful play of shadows.

This all-in-compassing book is Howe's second imprint and is a long-awaited survey of his expansive work that follows the key themes he has consistently explored through his career. He plays off juxtapositions, contradictions, and coincidences. In this book a woven tapestry emerges of Howe's work through time, reflecting these reoccurring themes and thematic transformations, as well as the interplay of ideas and concepts.

About the Authors

Jane Sherron De Hart, writer, is professor emerita of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Charles A. Riley II is the director of the Nassau County Museum of Art, an arts journalist, curator and professor at Clarkson University.

Anthony Haden-Guest is a writer, reporter and cartoonist. He was born in Paris and lives in New York and London. He has published in leading magazines in Britain and America.