A large sculpture by renowned artist and polymath Herbert Bayer has vanished from Beanie Baby founder and recluse Ty Warner’s luxury property in Montecito. When the billionaire toy designer bought the seaside Four Seasons Biltmore Santa Barbara hotel and its adjacent conference center in 2000, the Bauhaus masterpiece was included in the $160 million price. The hotel’s doors were closed in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and last year, it was discovered that the 1981 Bayer sculpture Walk in Space Painting had been removed from its lawn above Butterfly Beach. Now, artist and documentary filmmaker Koko Bayer wants to know what has been done with her grandfather’s work.
“I would like to know what their motivation was and why they decided that it was OK to destroy this work of art without consulting with the family,” Bayer said in a recent interview.
An Unexpected Mystery
Based in Denver, Koko is best known for her outdoor installations of printed images. She is currently directing the documentary head+heart+hand, showcasing and exploring her grandfather’s work. Having filmed footage of most of her grandfather’s sculptures and earthworks, Koko reached out to Warner’s representatives to request access to the closed hotel property so that she could shoot footage of Walk in Space Painting. She received no response. “It was just a black hole,” she said.
In May 2024, two Bayer fans contacted the Denver artist; they had tried to view the sculpture over the brick wall behind the Warner property. Hearing the sculpture had vanished, Koko took a flight to Santa Barbara to confirm their story. She found that Walk in Space Painting had been torn out of the ground; a sodded lawn had replaced it. Describing her pain at the discovery, she said, “My stomach just dropped. It was so sad to see this gorgeous thing just not there. It was like losing a member of our extended family. The not knowing is somehow worse than knowing what actually happened.”
The sculpture was likely removed between January and May 2024, as the last known photo of Walk in Space Painting was from the beginning of the year.
The History of Walk in Space Painting
The 40-foot-diameter Walk in Space Painting was a vividly colored sculpture crafted from concrete and glazed brick. Forty feet in diameter, the sculpture occupied a shallow pool on its Montecito lawn, ringed with palm trees. Designed as a “walk-through painting,” the sculpture required a $147,000 budget to construct and featured six independent walls (suggesting canvases) and eight stepping stones over the pool. It was Herbert Bayer’s final personally directed masterwork at age 81.
Bayer was a disciple of interwar Germany’s Bauhaus School; during the 1920s, he studied, worked, and taught with other famed artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. After leaving the Bauhaus for Berlin, Bayer continued his work in art and design until his blacklisting by the Third Reich in 1937. In 1938, he fled to the United States, living in New York, then in Aspen, Colorado, for three decades, and finally in Montecito, mere blocks from the site of Walk in Space Painting. He died in 1985. Art historians consider Walk in Space Painting among Bayer’s most significant works; the artist took 20 years to complete its design.
Was the Sculpture Destroyed?
Koko Bayer believes it would have been impossible to remove her grandfather’s work from the hotel lawn without destroying it. Photos from 1981 documenting the sculpture’s construction reveal complex foundation systems to support its freestanding walls. However, because no permits for demolition or construction have been permitted on the property since 2009, the location and current status of the missing sculpture remain a mystery. If the artwork was destroyed, the act may have been illegal, as California law grants an artwork the moral right to exist for half a century after the artist’s death.San Diego artist Paul Hobson, who assisted with the completion of Walk in Space Painting, suggests the possibility that the sculpture could be rebuilt, given that Bayer’s designs were specific and detailed. Bayer’s granddaughter has indicated she would be open to such a project. “I would love to see this Hollywood ending,” Koko Bayer said, “where somehow this wrong gets righted, and a new version of this sculpture gets built somewhere in Santa Barbara, where people could see and interact with it.”
