Color Studies for Sculptures, Rockne Krebs, 1966

1962-1965 United States Navy
1965 Trip to Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont to meet and visit Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland. Began plexiglass sculptures.

The studies are a record of Krebs’ work in development, one of the steps he took before beginning a sculpture.

“...Krebs would pursue the rather typical course of the serious student artist, majoring in sculpture at the University of Kansas (1961) with the sculptors Elden Tefft, Bernard Frazier, Jim Bass and James Sterrit. The fact of his long artistic apprenticeship has been overlooked because he appeared to most art world observers to have been born with lasers in the sixties….” Jay Belloli, 1990

“In 1965, when a newcomer to Washington, a sculpture that he made was given the first prize at the Corcoran Area Show. A rather academic work, made of painted wood and metal in a constructivist-cubist style, it is here on view. 

The references of this piece to others, to Kenneth Noland and Tony Caro, are no longer of much interest. What makes it intriguing is the way that it predicts what was to come. It hints at orbs and landscape, and its title is prophetic. It is called “One Sun.” Krebs had not yet worked with laser beams or sunshine, but he was even then, perhaps without quite knowing it, reaching toward pure light.” Paul Richard, Rockne Krebs: Birthdays, Whales and Debts, The Washington Post, 1978.

In the summer of 1960 Rockne applied for and was accepted to assist Thomas Hart Benton, who was creating his mural “Independence and the Opening of the West” at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.
​“I somehow missed this very interesting posting the first time around [2015]. My guess is that what impressed Rockne the most about the experience was the ambitious scale of Benton's piece and its grand public theme. The artistic vocabulary is of course very different, but these are notable characteristics of his own mature works with lasers and other light mediums.”
- Benjamin F. Forgey, December 3, 2022

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