LOS ANGELES, CA.- With the buzz around the Los Angeles art market reaching a fever pitch, Bonhams, one of the world’s largest international fine art auction houses, announced the line-up for its Made in California: Contemporary Art Auction, held on October 13. As many Californian artists such as Ken Price, Larry Bell and John Altoon have recently risen to global acclaim through important exhibitions such as the Getty Center’s “Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art: 1945-1980” (2011) and the Centre Pompidou’s “Catalog L.A.: Birth of an Art Capital 1955-1985” (2006), so has Bonhams’ curated auction grown significantly‒ becoming the premier site for Los Angeles and Bay Area contemporary art.

Leading the auction is LA native Ken Price's biomorphic shimmering sculpture entitled "Turning Green" (1996) (est. $70,000-90,000). Price, on the heels of his compelling Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition, "Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective" (2012-2013), created an innovative body of work, studying under legendary ceramicist Peter Voulkos in Los Angeles. Price developed a unique practice that pushed the boundaries of traditional pottery, abandoning the use of glazing in favor of a more complex process involving acrylic paints. He would sometimes apply more than 70 layers of paint to the clay's surface, then reductively sand away the layers to reveal an exquisite surface of colors which emerge and recede from one another.

An important painting from San Francisco’s Jess Collins (simply known as Jess) is also on offer. Like Price, he has been the subject of re-examination by the curatorial community, currently featured in an award-winning exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Once a chemist who helped develop weapons grade plutonium on the Manhattan Project, the artist abandoned a life of destruction in favor of one focused on creation. Jess’s painting "Tethys' Festival" (1961) (est. $60,000-80,000) is exemplary of his ability to create layers of allegories through the use of appropriation. Jess's friend Wallace Berman, also a leading Bay Area artist who emerged in the mid-1960s, is dually represented in the auction. His collection of collages, including "Silent Series" (1965) (est. $25,000-35,000), consists of multiple variants of a hand-held Sony transistor radio, which Berman culled from a magazine and re-rendered using a photocopy Verifax machine.

Also on offer is a powerful, monochromatic "Untitled" (2000) (est. $25,000-35,000) work from LA artist Mary Corse, one of the few female members of the male-dominated "Light and Space" artistic movement of the 1960s. From her "White Paintings" series, "Untitled" blends microscopic glass beads into the paint, adding depth, texture and the creation of optical illusions through light.

Alexis Chompaisal, Made in California: Contemporary Art department director at Bonhams, comments, "As the only auction house with a sale devoted to California contemporary art, we are proud to have been a key contributor to the west coast's evolution as an integral part of the international art community and are excited to continue to bring top dollars for California artists’ works at auction."