Collection: Tony DeLap

Tony DeLap (1927–2019) was an American artist whose work from the early 1960s onwards engaged with shaped canvases, geometric abstraction and the physical properties of materials including fibreglass, acrylic and aluminium. Based in California, he was associated with the group of artists working around the Ferus Gallery and the broader Los Angeles scene whose shared interest in industrial fabrication, pristine surfaces and optical precision was identified by critics including John Coplans as a distinctly West Coast development. DeLap’s work was included in 5 at Pace at Pace Gallery, New York, in 1965, one of the earliest significant presentations of this Los Angeles tendency to a New York audience. He later developed an interest in magic and illusion as structural principles, producing works that incorporated concealed mechanisms and perceptual misdirection.