Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray, “Untitled” (State II), 1980, Lithograph Printed in Black Ink on Wove Paper, 45.7 x 63.5 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts

Elizabeth Murray was an American painter whose lively imagery and reconsideration of the rectangle as the traditional format for painting was part of a reinvigoration of that medium in the 1970s and ’80s. She is sometimes described as a Neo-Expressionist. The American art critic Roberta Smith considered her to have “reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form.”

Murray was raised in small towns in Michigan and Illinois, and she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (B.F.A., 1962) and Mills College in Oakland, Calif. (M.F.A., 1964). She taught at Rosary Hill College in Buffalo, N.Y. (1965–67), and then moved to New York City.

After experimenting with reconciling late-minimalist painting with aspects of identifiable subject matter, Murray literally began to push the edges of the rectangle in works such as “Children Meeting” (1978), with large bulbous forms and lines pressing against the edge of the canvas. As if to make the exterior edges of her painting correspond to the energetic rhythms of the various elements pictured within—highly stylized objects such as coffee cups, tables, and chairs, as well as less-definable shapes—she began to create shaped canvases.

Elizabeth Murray carried her experimentation further during the 1980s, when she began to use multiple canvases for a single work. Her “Painters’ Progress” (1981), for example, is a unified image composed of 19 canvases. She evolved a personal and sprightly range of curved imagery, much of which made reference to art-historical styles. In the 1990s, in works such as “Careless Love” (1995–96), she constructed her canvases to extend a bit from the wall, giving them sculptural and spatial qualities.

Hunt Slonem

Hunt Slonem, “Black Diamond”, Oil on Canvas, 2015, 56 x 88 Inches

Bringing a freewheeling sense of awe, wonder and detail to his wild array of paintings and sculptures and peaceful, mystical living and working spaces, NYC based artist and lifestyle trendsetter Hunt Slonem is considered one of the great colorists of his time.

As vibrant a dresser and decorator as he is a painter and sculptor, the Maine born creative force of nature is well known for his neo-expressionist works of butterflies, rabbits and tropical birds, the latter often inspired by the 30 to 100 exotic feathered friends he houses at any given time in an aviary in his 30,000 square foot Manhattan studio.

Slonem has had over 300 one-man shows in galleries and museums internationally. His work is also in the permanent collections of 250 museums including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and the Moreau Foundation, and is part of private collections all over the world, including those of many celebrities.

Miquel Barcelo

Works by Miquel Barcelo

Miquel Barceló was born in 1957 in Felanitx on the island of Mallorca. In 1974, Barceló made his first trip to Paris, leaving the constrained environment of Franco’s Spain for the first time. Impressed by the paintings of the avant-garde, Barceló was particularly struck by the works of Jean Dubuffet, Art Brut, and Art Informel. After taking classes at the Decorative Arts School in Palma de Mallorca that year, Barceló enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona in 1975, where he attended classes for a few months before returning to Mallorca.

Back in Mallorca, Barceló joined the conceptual avant-garde group, “Taller Lunatic,” participating in their vanguard demonstrations and happenings enabled by the changed political circumstances after Franco’s death. At this time, Barceló experimented with making conceptual works that explored the behavior of matter and decomposition; early works included wooden and glass boxes that contained decaying foods and unorthodox, organic materials.

Over the past four decades, Barceló has explored a variety of styles, from neo-expressionist canvases to colorful still lifes and pale, thickly textured abstract paintings. An artistic nomad, Barceló draws inspiration from his time spent in varying locations; though he always returns to his native Mallorca, over the years Barceló has also worked in Barcelona, Portugal, Palermo, Paris, Geneva, New York, the Himalayas, and West Africa. Working across a wide range of mediums, including paintings, works on paper, ceramic, and bronze, Barceló has continued to experiment with the materials of his art, frequently incorporating materials from his extensive travels into his paintings.

Across this diverse body of work, there are several recurring themes. He has continued to be fascinated by the natural world, creating richly textured canvases that recall the earthly materiality of Catalan painters such as Antoni Tapies and Joan Miro, as well as compositions that study the effects of light and the ever-changing colors of the sea. He has also explored the history and traditions of painting, exploring the medium’s traditional subjects and technical challenges through his experimentation with the treatment of light, color, perspective, and composition.