Curator

  • Art Institute Chicago
  • Harvard art museum
  • My Exhibition
Abstract painting with defined sections of green, blue, black, and white on an irregularly shaped canvas

Back on Earth

1981

Elizabeth Murray American, 1940–2007

United States

Elizabeth Murray became known for her brightly colored and shaped canvases in late 1970s New York. Her vibrant and energetic visual language playfully challenged the formal conventions of painting—such as the idea that the canvas must be rectangular. Back on Earth is composed of two grandly scaled canvases—one geometric (blue), the other biomorphic (green)—that are inextricably linked by the artist’s use of color and rambunctious imagery. The animated, squid-like black table—a recurring motif in Murray’s paintings—here further confounds the relationship between figure and ground.

Oil on two canvases

Contemporary Art

Chicago Artists

Women artists

SAIC Alumni and Faculty