Winter

Artist Elizabeth Murray (American, 1940–2007)

Date1997

Mediumoil on canvas on wood

Dimensions116.8 x 120.7 x 3.8 cm (46 x 47 1/2 x 1 1/2 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund and Chapin Riley Fund

Terms

Object number2010.238

Label TextElizabeth Murray belonged to a generation of women artists who had a healthy disregard for rules. In paintings that challenged distinctions between figuration and abstraction, she introduced forms with everyday associations painted with a playful yet aggressive physicality that spoke of domestic experience and emotions—from household upheaval to unrestrained joy. Blending influences from Cezanne, Picasso, and Miro to cartoon drawing and graffiti, and incorporating the lessons of Cubism’s shattered forms and Surrealism’s biomorphism, Murray created eccentrically shaped canvases whose contours were linked to the symbolism of their imagery. In Winter, Murray invents a topsy-turvy space where an “unstill still-life” (complete with cup, saucer, tablecloth, and lamp chain) breaks through the rectangular tabletop whose animated legs behave more like limbs that threaten to run right off the wall. Murray’s achievement was to re-open the possibilities of abstract painting for the next generation: “Abstraction is about intuiting other realities; sometimes there is a remarkable conjunction between the realities intuited and the realities of the world.”ProvenancePrivate collection; consigned to the PaceWildenstein Gallery, New York, NY

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