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.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
McKee Gallery, New York | Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
Martin Puryear on the Art21 blog |
