Ken Price was born in Los Angeles in 1935 and received a B.F.A. from the University of Southern California in 1956, before studying with Peter Voulkos at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and completing an M.F.A. at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred in 1959. Returning to Los Angeles, he joined the Ferus Gallery, where he held several solo exhibitions. He first gained recognition in the early 1960s for his Eggs series and went on to create abstract variations on cup, teapot and vase forms, distinguished by asymmetrical shapes and vibrant colours.

Price exhibited widely throughout his career, and his work is held in public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He died in New Mexico in 2012, while working on a 50-year retrospective of his work for LACMA, which opened later that year before travelling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.