Artist Close up

Peter Shire is an American sculptor, ceramicist, and furniture designer born 1947 in Echo Park, Los Angeles. A ceramics student at the Chouinard Institute in Los Angeles, Shire graduated in 1970 and opened his own studio two years later. Shire’s first solo exhibitions were presented in California and Hawaii in 1975. Starting with the teapot in his early career, Shire is recognized for his reimagination of functional objects as sculptures, taking notes from the Bauhaus, Futurism, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco movements. In 1980, Shire began to create furniture pieces in glass and metal. The same year, he co-founded Italian design and architecture collective the Memphis Group (aka Memphis Milano) and would become responsible for designs of two of the group’s most iconic works, the Brazil table (1981) and the Bel Air armchair (1982).

Shire has executed public art pieces across California and was an American Institute of Architects design team member for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. His work has been presented internationally in independent exhibitions at museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Gallery Saito in Sapporo Hokkaido, Japan. Shire’s work is featured in collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Total Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul. Today, Peter Shire still lives and works in Echo Park.