Robert Murray
(1936–)
Robert Murray
1936–
Robert Gray Murray (1936– ) is a Canadian sculptor, painter, printmaker, and educator. He is known for his large-scale, colourful, and abstract sculptures made of sheets of welded metal.
Born in Vancouver, BC, Murray was raised in Saskatoon, SK. He began his artistic career as a landscape painter, studying at the Regina College School of Art from 1956 to 1958 and at the Allende Institute in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico from 1958 to 1959. Upon returning to Canada in 1959, Murray attended the Emma Lake Artist Workshop with Barnett Newman. Newman introduced Murray to the ongoing abstract expressionist movement in New York City, and the pair became lifelong friends. In the same year, Murray was commissioned to design a sculptural fountain for Saskatoon City Hall. This project shifted his focus from painting to sculpture. In 1960, Murray moved to New York City.
Murray’s early sculptures often feature metal columns that were constructed with the help of fabricators. The steel was cut and bent to form angles and corners and was then finished with coloured industrial paints. Murray’s collaboration with metal fabricators in a factory setting allowed him to create largescale works. Furthermore, this collaborative relationship allowed him to focus on the conceptual basis of his pieces rather than the logistics of their execution.
Bringing together his background in Canadian landscape painting with his interest in abstraction and colour field painting popular in New York at the time, form, scale, and colour became important elements of his practice. Beginning in 1974, Murray’s monumental sculptures began to take on more complex and fluid forms. Their architectural presence and abstract forms influenced the way that the surrounding landscape was perceived. Furthermore, the painterly quality of the coloured metal surfaces drew attention to the way that light and shadow function across different structures. Overall, Murray’s sculptures contributed to post-war discussions about abstraction, public art, and industrial fabrication.
Murray’s work has been collected and exhibited internationally. His sculptures are held in public and private collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, among others. In 1999, the National Gallery of Canada held a retrospective of his work titled The Factory and the Studio. In 2000, he was awarded the Order of Canada, and he is a member of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Beyond his artistic success, he has also worked as an art educator in New York at Hunter College, the School of Visual Art, and Cornell University.