Martin Puryear in his
Chicago studio, 1987. Photo
© 1987 Martin
Puryear |
Martin Puryear (Artist)
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
thirty-five 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 eighteen-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.
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Click on the book
cover to view the entire Martin Puryear exhibition at the Museum
of Modern Art, New York.
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