About this artwork
Beginning in 1976, Elizabeth Murray developed a reputation for her brightly colored, sculptural, shaped canvases, which illustrate objects and figures from her daily life. Influenced by Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and comic art, her vibrant and energetic visual language playfully complicates the formal attributes of painting. In Back on Earth, two grandly scaled canvases—one geometric (blue), the other biomorphic (green)—are inextricably linked by the artist’s assertive use of color and rambunctious imagery. The animated, squidlike table is a recurring motif in Murray’s paintings and is utilized here to visually link the canvases and to further confound the relationship between figure and ground.
-
Status
- On View, Gallery 293
-
Department
- Contemporary Art
-
Artist
- Elizabeth Murray
-
Title
- Back on Earth
-
Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
-
Date
- 1981
-
Medium
- Oil on two canvases
-
Dimensions
- Installed: 306.1 × 342.9 cm (120 9/16 × 135 in.); 306.1 × 342.9 cm (120 1/2 × 135 in.)
-
Credit Line
- Purchased with funds provided by Solomon B. Smith; Twentieth-Century Discretionary Fund
-
Reference Number
- 1982.406
-
Copyright
- © 1981 Elizabeth Murray