<< BACK

SEARCH

CLASSIFIEDS

Martin Puryear, Untitled, 1982, Maple sapling, pear wood, and yellow cedar, 59 x 66 x 5”, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Promised gift of Judith Neisser and Family in memory of Edward Neisser, B.A. 1952, © 2007 Martin Puryear.

Martin Puryear, Sharp and Flat, 1987, Pine, 64-½ x 6’8” x 30”, Collection Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, © 2007 Martin Puryear, Image courtesy McKee Gallery, New York.

Martin Puryear, Self, 1978, Stained and painted red cedar and mahogany, 69 x 48 x 25", Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Museum purchase in memory of Elinor Ashton, © 2007 Martin Puryear.

Martin Puryear, Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996, Ash and maple, 36’ x 22-¾” x 3”, width narrows to 1-¼” at top, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of Ruth Carter Stevenson, © 2007 Martin Puryear, Photo: David Wharton.

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
212-708-9400
New York
The Joan and Preston Robert
Tisch Gallery, sixth floor
The Donald B. and Catherine C.
Marron Atrium, second floor
Martin Puryear
November 4, 2007-
January 14, 2008

The retrospective of acclaimed American artist Martin Puryear (b. 1941) features approximately 45 sculptures, following the development of Puryear's artistic career over the last 30 years, from his first solo museum show in 1977 to the present day. Puryear began his career in the 1970s alongside other members of the Post-Minimalist generation. Working primarily in wood, he has maintained an unwavering commitment to manual skill and traditional building methods. His sculptures are rich with psychological and intellectual references, examining issues of identity, culture, and history.

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, D.C., in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction.

After earning his BA from Catholic University in Washington D.C., Puryear joined the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and later attended the Swedish Royal Academy of Art. He received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1971.

Puryear’s objects and public installations — in wood, stone, tar, wire, and various metals — are a marriage of Minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. Puryear’s evocative, dreamlike explorations in abstract forms retain vestigial elements of utility from everyday objects found in the world. In Ladder for Booker T. Washington, Puryear built a spindly, meandering ladder out of jointed ash wood. More than 35 feet tall, the ladder narrows toward the top, creating a distorted sense of perspective that evokes an unattainable or illusionary goal.

In the massive stone piece, Untitled, Puryear enlisted a local stonemason to help him construct a building-like structure on a ranch in Northern California. On one side of the work is an 18-foot-high wall — on the other side, an inexplicable stone bulge. A favorite form that occurs in Puryear’s work, the thick-looking stone bulge is surprisingly hollow, coloring the otherwise sturdy shape with qualities of uncertainty, emptiness, and loss.

Martin Puryear represented the United States at the São Paolo Bienal in 1989, where his exhibition won the Grand Prize. Puryear is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. Puryear was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1992 and received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1994. Martin Puryear lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York.

In 2003, Puryear served on the Jury for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition.

Organized by John Elderfield, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, Martin Puryear includes a new sculpture seen for the first time and will travel to three additional venues: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (February 24-May 18, 2008), National Gallery of Art in Washington, (June 22-September 28, 2008) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (November 1, 2008-January 25, 2009).

It will be accompanied by a publication featuring illustrations of all works in the exhibition, and essays by Michael Auping, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; John Elderfield; Elizabeth Reede, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA; an interview with Puryear by Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University; and a chronology by Jennifer Field, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA.

Martin Puryear in his Chicago Studio, 1987, © Martin Puryear.

Martin Puryear, Bask 1976, Staved Pine, 12" x 12' 2-1/4", Solomon r. Guggenheim Museum, New York Exxon Corporate Purchase Award, 1978.

Martin Puryear, Ad Astra, 2007, Various woods (ash, Sitka spruce, hickory, and pine) and found wagon wheels, 63' x 74 x 104", Collection of the Artist.