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Murray Reich

American

BiographyOf the dominant symbol in many of his paintings, Murray Reich wrote: "The arrow seems to be a universal sign. It is so simple and clear in its meaning that it can be described in a vast amount of styles, from a childlike scrawl to an intensely designed and sophisticated graphic image. Arrows are signs found everywhere, from the cursor on the computer, to street signs, to markers at complex country intersections and beyond. They are (as)signed the task of pointing. We are asked to respond to them by looking or moving to where they are pointing. Arrows involve time.

Born and raised in New York City, Murray Reich attended City College and received his M.F.A. in Painting from Boston University. As a younger artist, he attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and studied at Hunter College with Robert Motherwell and Richard Lippold.

Following his first solo show in New York at Max Hutchinson Gallery, Reich was awarded a Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship. His work was exhibited in two Whitney Annuals, as well as solo shows and group exhibitions.

Reich was Professor Emeritus of Painting at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he taught for 25 years. He served on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Art at Hunter College in New York. He was the inaugural director of Tanglewood's Summer Program in Art in Massachusetts, and also taught at Boston University.

Reich lived and worked in New York City and Mt. Tremper in upstate New York, where he was involved with several long-standing interests, including fly-fishing and playing squash. Beginning in 2003 he pursued his "Arrow Project," taking street photographs that offered an interesting counterpoint to his paintings.

AWARDS
1981 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1972 Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
1980 Memphis Mural," 16' x 3', GSA Art in Architecture Program, Clifford Davis Federal Office Building, Memphis, Tennessee
978 "Mural," 8' x 25', Bard College (wall demolished)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Artists Space, New York,
Sydney, Australia
Huntington Museum, Huntington, West Virginia
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
"Abstract Vocabularies," Studio 18 Gallery, New York
American Academy of Arts and Letters, Invitational Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture, New York
Edith C. Bloom Art Institute, Bard College
Charles Cowles Gallery, New York
Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
"23rd Annual of Contemporary American Painting," Lehigh University, Lehigh, Pennsylvania
"For the Reconstruction of Udine," Grey Art Gallery, New York
"Whitney Annual, " Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
"Painting on Paper," Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut
"9 from New York," Festival of Perth, Australia
"New Acquisitions," Power Institute of Fine Arts, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia
"Small Works," Museum of Modern Art, New York
"The Structure of Color," Whitney Museum of American Art
"8 from New York," Gallery A, Sydney, Australia
"New Work: New York," American Federation of Arts Traveling Exhibition
"Lyrical Abstraction," Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art
"Whitney Annual," Whitney Museum of American Art
"Insights," Parker 470, Boston
"Younger American Painters," American Federation of Arts Traveling Exhibition
"Painting without Brushes," Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Source:
Website of the artist at suggestion of Elizabeth Weatherford

Person TypeIndividual