Best known as a sculptor, Martin Puryear (b. 1941) is celebrated for his sensitivity to materials and his inventive merging of minimalist logic with traditional craftsmanship. His two years with the Peace Corps in Africa during the mid-1960s, followed by his study of furniture making in Scandinavia, played a critical role in shaping his artistic approach. Living among woodworkers, weavers, and potters deepened his devotion to craft and inspired a lifelong exploration of organic abstract forms that are evocative of everyday objects and the natural world.
Puryear first studied printmaking at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm in the late 1960s. He uses the medium to consider variations of his three-dimensional forms and to make “works about the ideas in sculpture without making images of the sculptures.” Given his interest in the handmade, it is not surprising that Puryear is drawn to the tactile qualities of intaglio. Exploring a range of techniques combining etching, drypoint, and aquatint, Puryear exploits the medium’s directness and immediacy in contrast to the slow, labor-intensive nature of sculpture. His prints consider shapes and spaces both real and imagined, the tensions between interior and exterior, and the dynamic between positive and negative space. While fully resolved works in their own right, Puryear’s prints echo and inform the ideas behind his sculptures, offering an illuminating window into his working process.
This selection of prints is part of a recent gift from William Drake (PA 1950) and JoAnn Carney that also includes prints by Mary Lee Bendolph, McArthur Binion, Willie Cole, and Stanley Whitney.
