It seems as though my recent posts have been about death and dying. Today I am sad to report that Elizabeth Murray died from complications from lung cancer. I was fortunate to see a retrospective of her career that spanned some 40 years last year at the Museum of Modern Art. Murray studied at the Art Institute in her native city of Chicago. She received an MFA from Mills College in California. By 1967 she had moved to New York. Remember that Murray came of age after minimalism. But she wasn't doing conceptual art, nor performance pieces. She was neither purely an abstract painter nor one who was representational. Think about Philip Guston or Susan Rothenberg when you think of her work. And she was a painter, after all. But the art scene changed by the 1980s and young, brash men came into the forefront: Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Anselm Kiefer. The label neo-expressionist was used for them, and at times for her work as well.
Her work was in the Venice Biennale of 2007.
Murray's personal life reflects shifts as well. Her first marriage, to fellow artist Don Sunseri (and with whom she had a son) ended in 1973. Later she married Bob Holman and had two daughters.
It is with such sadness that I write about the loss of a wonderful painter. You can see some of her work and read more about her.
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