Elizabeth Murray and Sergei Prokofiev

Audio Sept. 21, 2021

An abstract canvas shaped like a torso, painted with shades of red and light blue with swooping black shapes across — Elizabeth Murray, Don’t Be Cruel, 1985–1986, Carnegie Museum of Art. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“There is no question that the physicality of the making is very intense for me.”

Elizabeth Murray, Bomb Magazine, January 1, 1998

Composer, Sergei Prokofiev, and artist, Elizabeth Murray, rewrote history in very different ways. Murray’s paintings from the 1980s challenged the traditional two-dimensional painting form. Her energetic, colorful, three-dimensional compositions reimagined the act and physicality of painting. Prokofiev’s original concerto score was destroyed in a fire during the Russian Revolution prompting him to rewrite and reimagine his lost work. See more of Murray’s works in the new exhibition, Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves, on view at Carnegie Museum of Art through January 9, 2022.

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