Vancouver-born Robert Murray (b.1936) is revered as Canada’s most celebrated abstract sculptor. A graduate of the Regina College School of Art and a five-time participant of the famed Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, Murray created monumental and brightly coloured outdoor works that have been recognized internationally and exhibited alongside works by iconic sculptors including Donald Judd and Alexander Calder. After moving to New York in 1960 on a Canada Council grant, Murray gained international recognition for his bold and ambitious steel and aluminum sculptures. Focusing on the critical years of Murray’s artistic development, from the 1960s to the 1980s, this online exhibition reveals how his early minimalist sculptures gave way to more lyrical and elaborate forms as he explored new methods of industrial fabrication.
Curator Bio
This exhibition is curated by Jonathan D. Lippincott. He is the author of two books, Robert Murray: Sculpture and Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. He has written about art for The Paris Review Daily, On-Verge, and Tether: A Journal of Art, Literature, and Culture. He has curated shows including Chromatic Space, the eightieth-anniversary exhibition for American Abstract Artists, at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center in New York City, and Celestial and Terrestrial, at the New Arts Program in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. Lippincott is the associate director of the non-profit publisher Library of American Landscape History, the leading publisher of books that advance the study and practice of American landscape architecture.
Banner Image: Karen Tam, C.S. Wing Studio, 2020, mixed media, 304.8 x 294.7 x 167.6 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal. Installation view of C.S. Wing Studio at the Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto, 2020. Photo credit: Karen Tam.
Robert Murray, Ferus, 1963, painted steel, 360.8 x 111 x 56 cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, purchased 1999 (40049). Photo credit: Robert Murray.
Left to right: Robert Murray, Marker, 1964, painted steel, 220.8 x 53.5 x 88 cm, Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966 (66.3708); Robert Murray, Montauk, 1964, painted steel, 274.3 cm high, location unknown; Robert Murray, TO, 1963, painted aluminum, planar column 275 cm high, tubular column 271.1 cm high, Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Gift from the Junior Women’s Committee Fund, 1966, 65/60.1-.2. © Robert Murray; Robert Murray, Adam and Eve, 1962–63, bronze, 109.1 x 16 x 15 cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, purchased 1970 (16622). © Robert Murray; Robert Murray, Chief, 1964, painted steel, 231.4 cm high, Collection of Frank Stella.
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