The acclaimed sculptor Martin Puryear has another side: he is a great printmaker. In the spring of 2010, the Cincinnati Art Museum will exhibit this under-recognized art in a survey of a decade of Puryear’s printmaking. Often referencing his areas of personal interest, Puryear’s prints are inspired by furniture design, basketry and international travel. Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum, Martin Puryear Prints reveals Puryear’s exploration of printmaking to capture his three-dimensional ideas.

“Puryear’s sculptures are powerful, but slightly strange presences,” says Art Museum Director Aaron Betsky. “Now we will be able to see the very essence of what makes these images so memorable through the abstractions of his prints.”

Martin Puryear Prints showcases Puryear’s prints beginning in 2000, when he created 10 woodcuts to accompany a new edition of the critically-acclaimed Cane by Jean Toomer, published by Arion Press, San Francisco, California. Over the past decade, Puryear has made drypoints and etchings at Paulson Press in Berkeley, California. Distinguished by their consummate craftsmanship and inventive forms inspired by his sculpture, Puryear’s prints refine and transform his sculptural explorations into this two-dimensional medium.

“Puryear has created a body of printed works that extract the essence of minimalist abstraction with an appreciation of natural forms and ordinary objects,” said Kristin Spangenberg, Curator of Prints.

Puryear was born in Washington, D.C. in May 1941. After graduating from Catholic University in 1963 with a bachelor’s in art, he joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to Sierra Leone, West Africa. During his time there, from 1964 to 1966, Puryear studied the region’s indigenous carving, weaving and pottery techniques. He next spent two years in Sweden at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, observing the process of modern Scandinavian furniture making. Both of these experiences informed his later work in sculpture, which is also grounded in architecture, traditional sculpture and craft techniques as well as minimalist art.

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