Saxe studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (Los Angeles, California) from 1965 to 1969 and earned a B.F.A. degree at the California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, California). Saxe’s early works were primarily site-specific sculpture that employed large arrays of modular ceramic sections. Later, he turned to producing ornate vessels.
He has produced work for major solo and group exhibitions around the world and in 1983 he became the first artist fellow in residency at L’Atelier Experimental de Recherche et de Creation de la Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres in France. His work was the subject of a major mid-career survey organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1993-94, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shigaraki, Japan, and to the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, NJ.
In a 1993 review of Saxe's work, art critic Christopher Knight wrote:
“With outrageous humor and unspeakable beauty, he makes intensely seductive objects that exploit traditional anthropomorphic qualities associated with ceramics. Having pressed the question of the utility of his own art in a post-industrial world, his work engages us in a dialogue about our own place in a radically shifting cultural universe. The result is that Saxe has become the most significant ceramic artist of his generation.”
Saxe is currently a professor in the Art Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Museum collections
Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center, Tempe, Arizona
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio
Carnegie Museum of Art, Institute and Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia
Cooper-Hewitt Museum Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Design, New York
Cultural Affairs Commission, County of Los Angeles, California
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire
de Young Museum, San Francisco, California
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
Gardiner Museum, Ontario, Canada
Kruithuis Museum, 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Pavilion de Marsan, Palais de Louvre, Paris
Musée National de Céramique de Sèvres, Sèvres, France
Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas
Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum, Logan, Utah
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California
Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
Renwick Gallery, National Collection of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island
Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, R.O.C.
The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
The White House Collection of American Crafts, Washington, D.C.
Solo exhibitions
GRIN—Genetic Robotic Information Nano (Technologies), Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California, 2011
New Work, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California, 2004
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 2000
The American Hand, Washington, D.C., 1998
Wish I may, Wish I might, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California, Garth Clark Gallery, New York, 1997
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1996
Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1995
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1994
The Clay Art of Adrian Saxe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan and Newark Museum, New Jersey (1993–1995)
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1992
Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1991
Garth Clark Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, 1991
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1990
Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1989
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1988
Art Gallery, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, 1987
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1987
Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1985
The American Hand, Washington, D.C., 1985
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1985
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York, 1983
The American Hand, Washington, D.C., 1983
Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1983
Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1982
