Chris Sharp

We are looking forward to working with the estate of Deborah Hanson Murphy (1931 — 2018) next year.

Born in Stockton, CA in 1931, Murphy eventually settled down in Paris where she spent the majority of her life as a serious artist. She began painting what she would call her “Variations” (still lives) around 1974, which she continued until her death in 2018. In these paintings, lean and airy compositions revolve around a seemingly stable lexicon of elements (shells, leaves, etc) which are articulated along an implied horizon in empty monochromatic fields of sienna, gray, light mauve or beige. While the structure remains consistent throughout her work, the paintings became increasingly rarified, essentialist and abstracted as she progressed. Her approach to painting was methodical and obsessive, often revisiting a single work up to ten times over a decade and notating on the back each time she did so. For all their classicism, her rigorous and meditative pictures feel as fresh and contemporary as anything being made today.

Having rarely exhibited in her lifetime, she had her first posthumous solo with Balice Hertling in Paris in 2023. Our first exhibition with Murphy will be at CONDO in London with Kate MacGarry this coming January. Keep an eye out for it. More exciting projects to follow.

Variation 227, 1983
Oil on canvas
21.26 x 28.74 in
54 × 73 cm

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