Ralph Bacerra was a ceramic artist and career educator. He lived and worked in Los Angeles, California.
From 1959 to 1961, Bacerra was a student at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he studied under the celebrated ceramist and educator and Vivika Heino. Bacerra joined the U.S. Army in 1961, returning in 1963 to find the position of chairperson of the ceramics department at Chouinard left open by Vivika Heino. Bacerra occupied this position there from 1963 to 1971, at which point Chouinard was renamed the California Institute of the Arts and moved to Valencia, California. After this move in 1971, the ceramics department was dropped from the school's curriculum, and Bacerra went to work full-time in his studio. Bacerra is credited with important technological innovation in advanced ceramics, most notably resulting in his development of oven-top ranged surfaces for the Induction Stove Corporation that featured the use of electromagnetic induction. Bacerra returned to teaching in 1983, this time accepting an offer from the Otis Art Institute to be chairperson of the ceramics department. This department was founded at Otis by influential artist Peter Voulkos.