Photo: Hector Valdivia
American, b. 1949
Lives and works in Holualoa, HI and Bozeman, MT
Since the 1970s, Deborah Butterfield has been known for her equine sculptures crafted from cast bronze, as well as from found and salvaged materials such as scrap metal, mud, and clay. Butterfield’s bronze horses begin as maquettes created from branches, twigs, and driftwood. Once she combines these materials into her remarkable equine forms, each individual component is cast in bronze and exactingly reassembled according to her original design. Resembling horses in standing and reclined poses, these evocative works reflect the artist’s uncanny ability to imbue her carefully assembled forms with a specificity usually reserved for living beings.
Born in San Diego in 1949, Deborah Butterfield first began to explore the form and presence of horses at UC Davis. Initially intending to focus on veterinary medicine, she would later join Davis’ visual arts program, studying with Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, William T. Wiley, and Roy De Forest. She received her BA in 1971 and MFA in 1973.
Butterfield’s sculptures have been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and internationally. Her work is currently the subject of the career-spanning retrospective P.S These are not horses, on view at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, on view until June 24, 2024.
Butterfield was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2022, as well as the Governor’s Art Award conferred by the Montana Arts Council (2010); American Academy of Achievement Award (1993); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1980); National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1977, 1980); and the Purchase Award for Sculpture and Student Jury Award for Sculpture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1972). She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Kansas City Institute, MO; Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA; Montana State University, Bozeman, MT; and Rocky Mountain College, Billings, MT.
Her work has been collected by numerous museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Berkeley Museum of Art, CA; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, CA; Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Denver Art Museum, CO; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C; Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Oakland Museum of California, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C; Toledo Museum of Art, OH; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Public commissions include Gold Butte for Ohio University in Athens, OH; Paint and Henry for Copley Square, Boston, MA; Lyon and Princess Pine for Portland International Airport, OR; and Bonfire and Meridian for Kansas City Zoo, KS.
The artist currently divides her time between Holualoa, HI and a ranch in Bozeman, MT, where she raises, trains, and rides horses.