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2025 · Lithograph with chine-collé on black paper
28 1/2 × 29 9/16" (72.4 × 75.1 cm)
Museum of Modern Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Martin Puryear
1941
Washington, D.C., USA
Sculpture
Representation
None documented
3
Institutional Exhibitions
90
Works in Collection
160
Assets Indexed
12
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
70%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
No movements recorded
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
Contemporary Works from the Collection
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1985–1986
No image
Reinstallation of the Contemporary Galleries
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1985
No image
An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1984
About
Why this artist matters now
Martin Puryear works primarily in wood, shaping large-scale sculpture through a reductive technique grounded in traditional craft. His forms are spare and quietly monumental, combining hand-tool precision with an attention to the inherent properties of each material. The work occupies a space between abstraction and organic reference, resisting easy categorization while remaining rigorously physical. Puryear has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, where he received the Golden Lion.
Source: Matthew Marks · Trust score: 100% · Updated 2mo ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
—
Medium
Sculpture
Related Artists
6 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (90)
View all 90 artworks →
Record
Images
25 assets
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Related artists
Adjacent in the graph
Record
Movements and affiliations
No movements linked yet
Institutional
Representation & Collections
Represented by
Matthew Marks Gallery
CurrentIn collection
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
In collection
Art Institute of Chicago
In collection
Cleveland Museum of Art
In collection
Whitney Museum of American Art
In collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Market
Auction sale history
Houses that have sold works by this artist at auction
Background
Education
The Catholic University of America
Visual Arts
Yale School of Art
Visual Arts
Archbishop Carroll High School
Visual Arts
Record