Martin Puryear

American, 1941

Puryear is an artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in wood and bronze, among other media, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials. Born in Washington, D.C., he received his B.A. from The Catholic University of America and a graduate degree in sculpture from Yale University. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone from 1964 to 1966. Puryear’s first solo exhibition was held in the late 1970s at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. In the 1980s he participated in two Whitney Biennials, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. The Museum of Modern Art presented a 30-year survey of Puryear’s work in 2007-2008 and he received the 2011 National Medal of Arts.