Bill Beckley

Hot and Cold Faucets, 1975

Born in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, a small farming town in the Amish countryside, Bill Beckley studied from 1964 to 1970, finalizing at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where he met Bruce Nauman, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, and Marcia Tucker, then a curator at the Whitney Museum. Through Tucker his work was included in ‘Art in the Mind’ (1969), the first conceptual art exhibition in the United States. Beckley moved to New York City in 1970 and lived for a time on a sailboat off City Island. He was one of the artists (along with Gordon Matta Clark, Barry Le Va, Bill Bollinger) who organized the first exhibition of the legendary gallery 112 Greene Street. He met Louise Bourgeois and Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim became a lifelong friend. He married his second wife in 1986 Laurie Johenning, a sculptor. They have two sons and live in New York City. Beckleys staged photographic still lives, put together with visual material from different sources, have been of important influence for the New York ›Picture Generation‹ (Sherman, Longo, Prince, Lawler u.a.).