Rudy Autio Sold at Auction Prices

Sculptor, Painter, b. 1926 - d. 2007

Rudy Autio was born to a family of Finnish immigrants in Butte, Montana and educated at the Montana State University, Bozeman (B.S 1950) and Washington State University, Pullman (M.F.A. 1952). Thereafter he became a resident artist (1952-57) with ceramic artist Peter Voulkos at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena. After 1957 he taught at the University of Montana where he headed the ceramics department in the School of Fine Arts.

His best-known works are large in scale and made of slabs of clay in vessel format and covered with figurative images painted in colorful and playful low-fired glazes. Beginning with the 1960s he used the nude female figure as a point of departure – often with the figure accompanied with an attentive animal. Autio was a superb draftsman whose works are owned by important museums worldwide and have been celebrated with many solo exhibitions throughout the United States. For a list of selected solo and group exhibitions see Directions in Contemporary American Ceramics, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984.