Born in 1941 in Washington, D.C., Martin Puryear was the oldest of

seven children. From a young age, he constructed things such as bows

and arrows and guitars. Puryear attended Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., majoring in biology before switching to

art, receiving his B.A. in 1963. Between 1964–66 he served in the Peace

Corps in Sierra Leone, where he taught English, French, biology, and

art. While there, he began sketching West African flora and fauna and

learned the craft of local carpenters. After a backpacking trip in 1967 in

Lapland with his brother, Puryear spent two years at the Royal Swedish

Academy of Arts in Stockholm. He studied printmaking in his

coursework while working on independent sculpture projects. He also

spent a few weeks assisting cabinetmaker James Krenov. As he had

done in Africa, Puryear took the opportunity to investigate popular,

local craft traditions, but he also sought out modern Scandinavian

design. Puryear’s preference for using unadulterated materials and

clearly visible methods of construction was evident at this time. His

practice of interweaving strips of wood appeared in early sculptures.

After returning to the United States, Puryear studied at Yale University,

earning an MFA in 1971. Among the visiting instructors who made an

impression on him were Robert Morris and Richard Serra. While the

unitary forms of Minimalist art would influence him, he would reject

both its strict geometry and its industrial fabrication. Shortly after

leaving Yale, the artist joined the faculty of Fisk University in

Nashville. He taught at the University of Maryland in College Park

from 1974–78. While teaching in Maryland, he maintained a studio and

residence in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. A 1977 a fire

destroyed many of his possessions and artworks. To put this loss behind

him, he left the East Coast for Chicago, where he taught at the

University of Illinois.

Puryear has exhibited widely. His first solo exhibition, at the Gröna

Palletten Galleri in Stockholm, was held in 1968. Select, major solo

exhibitions include a show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1977) and

traveling surveys organized by the University Gallery, University of

Massachusetts in Amherst (1984), the Art Institute of Chicago (1991–

93), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2001–02), the BALTIC Centre

for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (2003), and the Museum of Modern

Art in New York (2007). His work has appeared in the Whitney

Biennial (1979, 1981, and 1989), Bienal de São Paulo (1989), and

Documenta (1992). In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art, New York,

organized a major retrospective of his work, which traveled to the

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; the National Gallery of Art,

Washington, DC; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

California. Currently, the Cleveland Museum of art is organizing a

major retrospective of Puryear’s work set to open in 2026. Puryear has

also created public art projects for such venues as the River Road

Station of the Chicago Transit Authority, Chevy Chase Garden Plaza in

Maryland, Belvedere Park in Battery Park City, New York, and the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. In 2023, Puryear completed Lookout, his first large-scale sculpture made of brick, at Storm King Art Center in New York's Hudson Valley.