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Label Text At the beginning of her career Murray worked with traditional rectangular canvases. As her work developed she began to shape the canvases and then overlap them, striving to achieve a three-dimensional painting. Sad Sack fully epressses this investigation. After making a full-scale drawing and small clay model of the form, an armature was made out of soft plywood that was built up in layers and then sanded to achieve the rounded form. Canvas was stretched around and onto the armature. Source: NEWS January February 1991
Elizabeth Murray's work ranges from her early rectangular canvases, suggesting the influence of Constructivism, to shaped or fragmented canvases of biomorphic imagery. Source: News, November/December 1987.
Exhibition History"Commitment, Community and Controversy: The Des Moines Art Center Collections," Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, January 24, 1998 - May 10, 1998

"From Body to Being: Reflections on the Human Image," Des Moines Art Center, Feb. 1 - May 4, 1997

"Paintings Off the Wall," Sheldon Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Oct. 1 - Dec. 1991
Published ReferencesAN UNCOMMON VISION: THE DES MOINES ART CENTER, Des Moines Art Center, 1998, ref. p.206, color ill. p.207
DimensionsOverall: 80 1/4 × 72 1/8 × 23 in. (203.8 × 183.2 × 58.4 cm)
Accession Number 1990.12
Classificationspainting
CopyrightARS
Sad Sack
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Elizabeth Murray
2001
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones
ca. 1905
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Kara Elizabeth Walker
1996
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Julian Schnabel
1978
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Robert Rauschenberg
1958
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Richard Pettibone
1965
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Walter Wellington Quirt
1951