Wright Auction

Elizabeth Murray is considered one of the most important postmodern abstract artists of her day. Born and raised in Chicago, she desired to be an artist from a young age, initially setting her sights on being a cartoonist. Murray entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the goal of becoming a commercial artist, but after spending time at the museum viewing the work of El Greco, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and others, she unearthed her desire to become a painter. She graduated in 1962 with a BFA and continued her studies at Mills College in Oakland, California, earning her MFA before moving to New York City, where she would live and work until the end of her life.

Murray was a pioneer in her field, working with creatively shaped canvases that blurred the line between paintings as objects and paintings as spaces upon which to depict objects. Her ability to combine abstraction, cartoonist imagery, and recognizable forms to portray objects, relationships, people, and emotions led to a body of work which defies categorization and incorporates Minimalism and Pop, sculpture and painting, and abstraction and figuration. Murray herself once noted, “Somewhere in me, I think, lurks the pure abstract painter. And yet, I can never stay with it—it’s not possible for me. I always find myself wanting to find the image and yet keep it broken at the same time.” Though her work was serious in its commitment to pushing the boundaries of painting, it is united by an overarching sense of joy and playfulness and her intentional use of bright, sometimes garish, colors.

Murray was, in addition to being a successful painter, a sought-after instructor, visiting artist, and lecturer; her appointments include visiting artist at Wayne State University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1973), instructor at Bard College (1974–77), lecturer at Princeton University (1977), and instructor at Yale University (1977–80). She received numerous honors for her work including the Walter M. Campana Award from The Art Institute of Chicago (1982), an award from American Academy of Arts and Letters (1984), an honorary doctorate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1992), induction as an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (1992), and the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from College Art Association (2007). In 2005, she became only the fifth woman to receive a career retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and was also honored with many significant posthumous exhibitions. Murray’s work can be found in over ninety public collections in North America, Asia, and Europe.