Venice, CA – L.A. Louver is pleased to present an exhibition of Gwynn Murrill’s maquettes, which marks the first time the artist has brought together a show exclusively comprised of her small-scale sculptures. Including over ninety works, the exhibition presents the full breadth of subject matter -- deer, cats, dogs, bears, birds, tigers and cougars -- for which Murrill is renowned. The exhibition also introduces a new series of entwined figures titled The Wrasslers. Murrill has created these maquettes over a 45-year period, and they incorporate a wide range of materials, including aluminum, bronze, ceramic, vermiculite and wood.

“Creating maquettes reminds me of the joy of playing as a child….the kind of freedom that affords. My maquettes embody the things that I aspire to.” --- Gwynn Murrill

The maquette is a critical part of Murrill’s artistic process. Before developing a life-size sculpture, Murrill will first make a maquette in order to resolve issues of form, stance, proportion, surface detail and patina. In several instances, Murrill will not develop the maquette into a larger piece – for example, The Ape, 2007 and Acrobat Cat, 2009 -- deciding instead that the sculpture should exist only in diminutive scale. As in her life-size sculptures, each maquette captures the posture, character and movement of the animal she conveys. The maquette’s intimacy may also portend the grandeur of the life-size animal, such as Sitting Cheetah Maquette, 2005, (its full-scale counterpart resides in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California), or in the series Deer Maquette, 2005 (the larger versions may be seen in the City of Obihiro, Japan). The small scale also gives Murrill the freedom to experiment with form, color and material within the context of subject. The exhibition includes several examples of such diversity, such as the variety of colored Ceramic Binturong Columns, 2008, and the range of materials in Murrill’s series Elmo Maquette (Walking), 2001.

In addition to this extensive exhibition of maquettes, L.A. Louver presents Murrill’s latest life-size sculpture: Big Twisting Cheetah, 2009, bronze, 37 x 39 x 57 inches, which is one of the artist’s largest bronze forms to date.

The Artist
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gwynn Murrill earned her MFA from UCLA, and has lived and worked in Los Angeles for over thirty years. Murrill has shown her work in galleries and museums throughout the United States, as well as overseas, including the Saison Museum of Art, Tokyo; the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu; and the Nevada Institute for Contemporary Art, Las Vegas. She has exhibited widely in California, with works seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Orange County Museum of Art; Laguna Museum of Art; Long Beach Museum of Art; Monterey Museum of Art; and UC Santa Barbara among others. Her sculptures are represented in numerous public collections, including those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Los Angeles Grand Hope Park; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; Fresno Art Museum, California; TransAmerica Corporation, San Francisco; Target Corporation, Minneapolis, the City of Obihiro, Japan; and the American Embassy, Singapore. Her past awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; a National Endowment or the Arts Individual Artist Grant; a Prix di Roma Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, and a New Talent Purchase Award from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In June 2009, Murrill’s most recent public commission -- a mural and sculpture installation for The Montana in Pasadena -- received the Public Art Network Year in Review Award.

Concurrent to Gwynn Murrill: Maquettes at L.A. Louver (1 October through 7 November, 2009), a survey of Murrill’s seminal wood sculpture from the 1970s and ’80s, Gwynn Murrill: Early Wood Sculptures is on view at the Peter and Susan Barrett Art Gallery at Santa Monica College (1 September through 24 October, 2009).