GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.- Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park opened Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper. This exclusive exhibition is the first public showing of the gift of Pepper’s expansive print and drawing archives that was given to Meijer Gardens in 2016 and 2017. Spanning seven decades of work, this extraordinary gift from Pepper, one of the pioneering Contemporary sculptors, includes hundreds of drawings, prints, works on paper and notebooks – many containing sketches of her major sculptural endeavors. This exhibition runs through April 19, 2018 and displays sketches, studies, prints, and experimental drawings from across her entire career.

Pepper is world-renowned for her work, which often incorporates industrial metals like iron, bronze, stainless steel and stone into sculpture of a monumental scale, but her vast drawing and print repertoire is lesser known. Recognized regionally for her soaring steel Galileo’s Wedge, a favorite in Meijer Gardens’ Sculpture Park since 2009, Pepper’s monumental sculptures are celebrated from New York to San Francisco.

"Over the last two decades, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park has clearly demonstrated a strong commitment to my sculpture and I am enthusiastic to now have this major body of my work there," states Pepper. "To have in one location a space to study, compare and sequence my drawings and prints is an exceptional opportunity; I am most grateful to leave this record and have the curatorial team there looking after my work. The 2018 retrospective surveying sixty-five years of work is a rare luxury, and an unbelievable opportunity.” said Pepper.

“The importance of the gift and this exhibition simply cannot be overstated,” said Joseph Antenucci Becherer, Chief Curator and Vice President of Meijer Gardens. “The opportunity to experience the sheer brilliance of Pepper’s work and trace the trajectory of her career from a realist aesthetic in the late 1940s and 50s through her embrace of abstraction to become one of America’s leading abstract sculptors is beyond compare.”

Beverly Pepper (b. December 20, 1922, Brooklyn, NY) is a world-renowned sculptor and one of the most prolific artists of our time. She lives and works in Italy. Along with Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson and Barbara Hepworth, Pepper is one of four pioneering female artists.

Her repertoire includes sculptures created in bronze, steel, cast iron and stone; site-specific installations, drawings and prints. Her works have been exhibited and collected by major arts institutions and galleries around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Les Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris, France and The Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan.

Beverly Pepper established her career in the 1960s in the wake of Abstract Expressionism, and has been a major force across the international art scene since she first captured widespread critical acclaim in the 1960s.