Elizabeth Murray

The Arts Club of Chicago is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Elizabeth Murray. Chicago-born Elizabeth Murray is known for her distinctive sculptured canvases and aggressively bold palate.

The exhibition includes 11 paintings, which date from 1981 to 2007. Large-scale and vivid in color, these works chart her progression from the flat surface to three-dimensional and multi-layered canvases to polyptychs. Murray’s subject matter encompasses the “domestic,” as seen in her depictions of cups, tables, and chairs, as well as her early interest in comics, which she returned to in later works. Murray’s works on paper, completed between 1983 and 2004, are as varied and forceful in technique and subject matter as her paintings, ranging from abstraction to cartoonish graphics.

A catalogue with an essay by writer, curator, and educator Sarah Lewis accompanies the exhibition.

Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1962 and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA, in 1964. She was later awarded Honorary Doctorate degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and New School University, NY. Murray was the recipient of numerous awards including: Walter M. Campana Award from the Art Institute of Chicago (1982), American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1984), Skowhegan Medal for Painting (1986), Larry Aldrich Prize in Contemporary Art (1993), John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1999), and the College Art Association’s Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement (2006). Murray’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; the Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College, NH; and a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, NY in 2005. She was included in six Whitney Biennial exhibitions. Murray’s works are in several major public collections, including High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.