Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Phrygian (Cap in the Air)

Collection in Focus: Martin Puryear's Prints

In January 2021, the Morgan acquired an exceptional group of twenty prints by Martin Puryear. Made between 2001 and 2014 at Paulson Bott Press, Berkeley, CA, they represent nearly all the prints Puryear made during the first fifteen years of the 21st century and include several of his most important works in this medium.

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Grayscale print of various shapes
Martin Puryear
1941-

Phrygian (Cap in the Air)

Color softground etching with spitbite aquatint, aquatint, and drypoint on Somerset White paper.
Image: 23 3/4 x 17 5/8 inches (60.3 x 44.8 cm); sheet: 34 3/4 x 27 5/8 inches (88.2 x 70.2 cm)

Anonymous gift in honor of Katharine J. Rayner. NNPM

2021.17
Curatorial Comments

One of the most important contemporary American sculptors, Martin Puryear (b. 1941) has also made drawings throughout his career. Dating back to the Roman empire and popularized as a symbol of liberty during the French Revolution, the Phrygian cap was adopted in the 1790s by enslaved people struggling for their freedom in the Americas. Puryear explored the motif in several sculptures and works on paper. Here he heightened the dramatic effect of this powerful symbol by enlarging it to the full size of the plate and exploiting the tonal properties of aquatint to create a vivid, mottled background.

Notes

AP 8 from an edition of 50 with 12 artist proofs.

Provenance

Renée Bott. NNPM

Artist
Puryear, Martin
Classification
Print
Department
Modern and Contemporary Drawings
Century prints
21st century
Catalog link
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