De Wain Valentine (1936–2022) was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, and earned a BFA (1958) and MFA (1960) from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where the painter Richard Diebenkorn was his first teacher and Clyfford Still served as a guest instructor in his final semester; a summer fellowship at the Yale-Norfolk School of Art also brought him into contact with Philip Guston. A pioneering figure in the Light and Space movement, Valentine moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and became known for large-scale cast polyester resin sculptures; working first with Ed Revay, a resins-division representative at PPG Industries, and then with the Hastings Plastics Company of Santa Monica, he developed by 1966 a proprietary formulation he named Valentine MasKast Resin, which let him cast pieces at a scale and clarity not previously possible. His major works include Gray Column (1975–76) and Diamond Column (1978), both explorations of translucent colored volumes finished with the meticulous sanding and polishing for which he was known. He taught plastics technology at UCLA beginning in 1965. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, which mounted the exhibition From Start to Finish: De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column from September 2011 to March 2012.