BIOGRAPHY
A painter and printmaker, Elizabeth Murray's exploration of fine art began in Chicago, where she attended the School of the Art Institute and earned her BFA in 1962. From 1962 to 1964, Murray pursued her MFA at Mills College in Oakland, CA, and was exposed to the painters and sculptors of the Bay Area. Like them, Murray’s sources of inspiration were eclectic and tailored to her own whimsical creative preferences. She was as fascinated by the visual culture of her childhood: Walt Disney cartoons, Marvel comics, Norman Rockwell illustrations, as she was moved by the art and still-life paintings of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso and the subjects and styles represented later in the 20th century by Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. Murray’s paintings were indicative of one of the most uniquely personal, experimental, and challenging aesthetics to emerge in the last third of the 20th century.
Murray arrived in New York City in 1967 by way of Buffalo (for the first of many visiting professorships she would hold throughout her life). At the time, she had been creating Pop-inspired sculptures, and it was not until her move to New York that she re-focused on painting and returned to the medium that would define her career. Her relocation put her in direct proximity to the theories of the country’s most avant-garde contemporary artists and critics at a time when the art world seemed to have moved past painting. Murray, along with a few other figures, including Jennifer Bartlett, Philip Guston, and Susan Rothenberg, remained committed to the medium, even embracing its expressionist possibilities. Murray honed her personal blend of brightly colored abstractions that combined geometric and organic shapes with gestural brushwork. Her first inclusion in a major museum exhibition took place in 1971 as part of the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition. In 1974 she began exhibiting with Paula Cooper and in the 1990s at Pace Wildenstein.
Murray’s paintings were the result of carefully calculated reflections on the shapes, forms, colors, and pairings with which she liked to experiment. In a Murray painting, things appear to fit together in ways that seem to make sense overall but that, when closely examined, never quite gel. There is always a tension of hard, thin lines, severely cornered squares, and soft, curvy biomorphs that are forever trying to merge. These ideas are all present in Children Meeting (1978), a painting that also hints at an improbable tripartite homage to the forms of Kazimir Malevich, Stuart Davis, and Arshile Gorky.
Murray was a problem solver. She absorbed the artistic dilemmas of those she esteemed, and was unafraid to find her way through a visual conundrum or to keep playing with a painting until her juxtapositions seemed to work. Murray’s interest in the timeless challenge of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane led to her ground-breaking exploration of painting on shaped-canvas cutouts (a method also used by Frank Stella), which she began showing in 1978. In Tempest (1979), she took forms and bold, contrasting colors similar to those of Children Meeting and forced them to compete with and complement the reconfigured outline of the painting.
With Painter’s Progress (1981)—a fractured arrangement of smaller paintings that together revealed the image of a painter’s palette--Murray had found a new level of comfort with shaped canvases and was ready to inject even more whimsy and fun in her work. Teacups, shoes, and other ordinary objects began to find their way into her paintings as evidenced by Sail Baby (1983) and Dis Pair (1989–90).
In the 1990s and 2000s Murray’s oeuvre took on an unmistakable look all its own. With such works as Bowtie (2000) and Bop (2003), the forms and cutouts became increasingly bright, pictographic, cartoonish, and confident, seeming to indicate a triumphant, full circle blending of the career-long lessons she learned as a painter and a return to the kind of drawing she most enjoyed as a child.
Murray exhibited widely throughout her career. Included among her accolades are the Skowhegan Medal in Painting (1986), the Larry Aldrich Prize in Contemporary Art (1993), and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1999).
A painter and printmaker, Elizabeth Murray's exploration of fine art began in Chicago, where she attended the School of the Art Institute and earned her BFA in 1962. From 1962 to 1964, Murray pursued her MFA at Mills College in Oakland, CA, and was exposed to the painters and sculptors of the Bay Area. Like them, Murray’s sources of inspiration were eclectic and tailored to her own whimsical creative preferences. She was as fascinated by the visual culture of her childhood: Walt Disney cartoons, Marvel comics, Norman Rockwell illustrations, as she was moved by the art and still-life paintings of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso and the subjects and styles represented later in the 20th century by Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. Murray’s paintings were indicative of one of the most uniquely personal, experimental, and challenging aesthetics to emerge in the last third of the 20th century.
Murray arrived in New York City in 1967 by way of Buffalo (for the first of many visiting professorships she would hold throughout her life). At the time, she had been creating Pop-inspired sculptures, and it was not until her move to New York that she re-focused on painting and returned to the medium that would define her career. Her relocation put her in direct proximity to the theories of the country’s most avant-garde contemporary artists and critics at a time when the art world seemed to have moved past painting. Murray, along with a few other figures, including Jennifer Bartlett, Philip Guston, and Susan Rothenberg, remained committed to the medium, even embracing its expressionist possibilities. Murray honed her personal blend of brightly colored abstractions that combined geometric and organic shapes with gestural brushwork. Her first inclusion in a major museum exhibition took place in 1971 as part of the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition. In 1974 she began exhibiting with Paula Cooper and in the 1990s at Pace Wildenstein.
Murray’s paintings were the result of carefully calculated reflections on the shapes, forms, colors, and pairings with which she liked to experiment. In a Murray painting, things appear to fit together in ways that seem to make sense overall but that, when closely examined, never quite gel. There is always a tension of hard, thin lines, severely cornered squares, and soft, curvy biomorphs that are forever trying to merge. These ideas are all present in Children Meeting (1978), a painting that also hints at an improbable tripartite homage to the forms of Kazimir Malevich, Stuart Davis, and Arshile Gorky.
Murray was a problem solver. She absorbed the artistic dilemmas of those she esteemed, and was unafraid to find her way through a visual conundrum or to keep playing with a painting until her juxtapositions seemed to work. Murray’s interest in the timeless challenge of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane led to her ground-breaking exploration of painting on shaped-canvas cutouts (a method also used by Frank Stella), which she began showing in 1978. In Tempest (1979), she took forms and bold, contrasting colors similar to those of Children Meeting and forced them to compete with and complement the reconfigured outline of the painting.
With Painter’s Progress (1981)—a fractured arrangement of smaller paintings that together revealed the image of a painter’s palette--Murray had found a new level of comfort with shaped canvases and was ready to inject even more whimsy and fun in her work. Teacups, shoes, and other ordinary objects began to find their way into her paintings as evidenced by Sail Baby (1983) and Dis Pair (1989–90).
In the 1990s and 2000s Murray’s oeuvre took on an unmistakable look all its own. With such works as Bowtie (2000) and Bop (2003), the forms and cutouts became increasingly bright, pictographic, cartoonish, and confident, seeming to indicate a triumphant, full circle blending of the career-long lessons she learned as a painter and a return to the kind of drawing she most enjoyed as a child.
Murray exhibited widely throughout her career. Included among her accolades are the Skowhegan Medal in Painting (1986), the Larry Aldrich Prize in Contemporary Art (1993), and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1999).
REFERENCES
Mary M. Tinti. "Murray, Elizabeth." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T060508>.
Artwork behind title: Murray's Do the Dance (detail)
Mary M. Tinti. "Murray, Elizabeth." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T060508>.
Artwork behind title: Murray's Do the Dance (detail)
