Wilder Bentley Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1928 - d. 2018

Wilder Bentley (1928-2018) known as Wilder Bentley the Younger or Wilder Bentley, II, is a painter, printmaker and craftsman. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951 and did follow-up study at the University of Perugia, Italy between 1952 and 1953. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions including those at Sonoma State University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, Mills College in Oakland, University of California, Los Angeles, and the New Mexico State Library. His work is included in the collections of the Autry Museum of the American West, Rosicrucian Library, San Jose, the UCLA rare books collection, the New York Public Library and the Bancroft Library.

In 1959, Bentley set up the Bread & Wine Press in San Francisco, where he published four pamphlets of poetry by various authors, and went on to exhibit his work throughout the west. He has created many folios of his art in a variety of media, including engravings in wood and copper, watercolors, and digital works. Among these are included the works Oiomai, a Prophesy (1965), Adrift in Valueland, Vol. I: The Triumph of the Antichrist (1970), Native Funk and Flash (1976-1977), which was included in a traveling group show sent to museums throughout the southwest; and Stormâ??s Fury (2007).

In 1953, Bentley was one of five main characters playing the character Paul in Christopher Maclaine's avant-garde film The End. Wilder's father, Harvey Wilder Bentley, was a close friend of Chirua Obata and Wilder the Younger received informal watercolor and sumi painting instruction from Obata over many years.