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Artists›Melvin Edwards

Melvin Edwards

1937

Sculpture

Representation

None documented

Institutional Exhibitions

Works in Collection

Assets Indexed

Authority-backed Facts

Publications Referenced

80%

Profile Completeness

Cultural Positioning

Movements

No movements recorded

Related Artists

No edges recorded

Influence Graph

No influence edges encoded yet.

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

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No image

New Humans: Memories of the Future

New Museum

2026

No image

Committed to Print

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1988

No image

American Drawn and Matched

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1977

No image

76 Jefferson

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1975

No image

The Artist as Adversary

Museum of Modern Art, New York

1971

About

Why this artist matters now

Melvin Edwards is an American sculptor and printmaker who transitioned from painting to welding in early 1960s Los Angeles, developing an abstract formal language rooted in metal construction. His practice emerged from a childhood navigating both segregated and integrated communities in the South and Midwest, informing a sustained engagement with material process and abstraction. Edwards has worked across cast and welded forms, printmaking, and teaching, establishing a career spanning from California through New York since the mid-1950s.

Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago

Graph relationships

Taste overlap and adjacency

Movement

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Medium

Sculpture

Related Artists

6 in graph

Institutional

Museum Collections

Cleveland Museum of Art Museum of Modern ArtNew York New Museum Whitney Museum of American Art

Canonical record

Artworks (16)

Independent

2004 · Steel

14 × 6 × 8 3/4" (35.6 × 15.2 × 22.2 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Fragments and Shadows

2001 · Stenciled cotton rag pulp on paper

composition (irreg.): 13 × 9 1/4" (33 × 23.5 cm); sheet (irreg.): 22 7/16 × 17 1/8" (57 × 43.5 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Alabama

1989 · Steel

10 x 12 x 5" (25.4 x 30.5 x 12.7 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Chitungwiza from the Lynch Fragment series

1989 · Steel

11 1/8 x 10 1/4 x 10 3/8" (28.5 x 26 x 27.2 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Sekuru Knows from the Lynch Fragment series

1988 · Steel

14 7/8 x 11 x 7 1/4" (37.9 x 28 x 18.3 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

Cup of? from the Lynch Fragment series

1988 · Steel

12 7/8 x 6 3/4 x 9 1/2" (32.7 x 17 x 24 cm)

33 x 22.9 x 20.8 cm (13 x 9 x 8 3/16 in.)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Katutura from the Lynch Fragment series

1986 · Steel

11 3/4 x 5 7/8 x 4 7/8" (30 x 15 x 12.3 cm)

Museum of Modern Art

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Record

Images

11 assets